Assistance Listing 77.001

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued 41 grants under Assistance Listing 77.001, with the most recent award dated September 29, 2006 — 20 years ago. The program has not disbursed any grants since 2006 and should be considered inactive.

The program funded nuclear safety and regulatory research activities, including spent nuclear fuel storage safety and security, radioactive material transportation safety, instrumentation and control reliability, thermal-hydraulic research, waste management, and radiation protection standards development. Recent awards also supported state-level file reviews and initial surveys related to radioactive material oversight, as well as technical assessments of engineered barriers and zircaloy failure under severe loading conditions.

The grant portfolio was predominantly Project Grants (93 percent of 41 awards) with a smaller share of Cooperative Agreements (7 percent). The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was the sole funding source across all 41 awards, obligating $3.4 million in federal dollars total. Award magnitudes in the recent period ranged from $250 to $500 thousand for research-focused grants, with smaller awards of $10 thousand to $75 thousand supporting standards development work and state surveys. Three awards carried zero or near-zero obligations, reflecting organizational membership or cooperative arrangements with no direct funding.

The award cadence in 2002–2006 ranged from 4 to 12 awards per year, with 10 and 12 awards in the years immediately preceding the last award. Representative recent grants included $400 thousand for research on instrumentation and control reliability and thermal-hydraulic analysis (April 2006), $250 thousand for a cooperative agreement with the Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems (August 2002), and $128 thousand for evaluation and extension of the experimental basis for licensing 5–10 percent enriched nuclear reactor fuel (September 2006).

No grant opportunities are currently open under this program. The 20-year gap since the last award, combined with the absence of any recent solicitations in the source material, indicates this program is not actively issuing new grants.