Assistance program
Nuclear Energy Research, Development and Demonstration
$4.1 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Energy, Department of, Energy, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants (Cooperative Agreements)
- CFDA number
- 81.121
- What it does
- The Department of Energy (DOE) promotes nuclear energy as a resource capable of meeting the nation's energy, environmental, and national security needs by resolving technical, cost, safety, security, and proliferation resistance through research, development and demonstration at our national laboratories, universities and colleges, and U.S. industry. Our financial assistance programs play a key role in helping the DOE accomplish its mission of leading the nation's investment in the development and exploration of advanced nuclear technology and its underlying sciences. With this financial assistance, DOE strives to stimulate nuclear science and engineering education through support of advanced research and by training the next generation nuclear energy workforce, while seeking to align the nuclear energy research being conducted at U.S. colleges and universities with DOE’s mission and goals.
- Who benefits
- Any individual, partnership, corporation, association, joint venture, institution of higher education, or nonprofit organization will benefit.
- Who applies
- Federal, State, local governments, universities, consortia, nonprofit institutions, commercial corporations, and individuals may apply.
- Authorized by
- Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977, as amended
- Energy Reorganization Act of 1974
- Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended
- Atomic Energy Act
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
How the money flows
Committed dollars by how this program's money is paid out.
Grants
$3.8B
92%
Other
$322.5M
8%
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments