A year has passed since President Trump issued four executive orders to advance and expand American nuclear energy. Together the orders created a mandate for accelerated action to recenter the U.S. on the nuclear power spectrum after decades of decline. The executive orders certainly boosted the level of governmental activity, with the Department of Energy providing a tsunami of press releases on progress toward the president’s goals. But the Trump administration has a penchant for valuing optics and quick victories over strategy for the long term. A review of the progress to date provides examples of some impressive advances and some unfulfilled promises.
Licensing Reform: A core principle for the Trump administration is to reduce regulation. And the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was an early target of the red tape reduction efforts. While there were, and remain, concerns about the how the NRC’s independence would survive this initial onslaught, the fear of a compromised agency has not yet been realized. The agency also has taken significant and useful steps to adapt to the needs of small reactor licensing, adopt risk-informed licensing, and balance safety with efficiency of decision making. The new chair of the agency, Ho Nieh, has asserted that the NRC’s ability to make independent decisions is “non-negotiable”.
Nuclear Fuel: One of the most active areas of Trump’s nuclear policy has been creating the ecosystem for domestic nuclear fuel production. America has been highly dependent on Russian nuclear fuels for decades. But the war in Ukraine has led the U.S., along with many other nations, to seek a more reliable supply of fuel. The U.S. government has poured billions of dollars into the production of low-enriched uranium production and HALEU fuel that is needed by many new, smaller reactors. It also supports the production of TRISO fuels that embed uranium in a ceramic matrix. Further, the administration has resurrected plutonium as a fuel for reactors. Whether any or all of these activities can produce the necessary volume of fuel in the time scale required remains to be seen. The shortage of HALEU in particular is a significant problem for the development and testing of a wide range of small modular reactor designs.
Small Modular Reactors: SMRs have been touted as a path to cheaper and more expansive nuclear energy. These reactors are considerably smaller than traditional light-water reactors (up to 350 megawatts vs 1 gigawatt) and many of the designs use fuels and coolants that are more exotic than the existing fleet of reactors. There are a number of programs the government is supporting to drive small reactors from concept to deployment but there are significant challenges. One of the administration’s gambit’s is to have three SMRs achieve “criticality before America’s 250th anniversary.” Under the Reactor Pilot Project this race to create fission for July 4th will undoubtably reach the goal. But to what strategic end? Most will produce cold fission, which is a state that does not reach operating temperature or produce power, and therefore does not test the integrity of the reactor design. These pilot project reactors currently are designed to provide a power output of zero to 10MW, which is a long way from the 1.6 terawatts (TW) of electricity growth projected for the U.S. by 2050. After this anniversary celebration another decade will be required to bring any of these SMRs to the point of commercialization.
New Reactor Construction: Trump’s critical goal of having “10 new large reactors with complete designs under construction by 2030” has not appreciably advanced. Last year, the administration ponied up $800 million for the construction of ten Westinghouse AP-1000s in the U.S. But since then, little progress has been made. There is no site selection, no utility partner, and no construction or plan. The AP-1000 is the only American reactor that is licensed, has been constructed in the U.S. and abroad, and is ready for deployment now. Westinghouse has applied to update and renew its design certification to streamline deployment. It also has produced an analysis that states a 10-unit AP-1000 package can create over $92 billion in new gross domestic product. While no new large reactors are headed to construction, the Department of Energy (DoE) projects that the restart of shuttered reactors and the power uprating of operating units will add additional 5 Gigawatts (GW) of nuclear power by 2029.
Nuclear Exports: In general, the U.S. is playing catch up with its nuclear export rivals after decades of stagnation, but it is making headway. China now has 32 reactors under construction and Russia is building 27, including 20 outside the country. A resurgence of U.S. reactor exports includes the selection of the Westinghouse AP-1000 by Poland, Bulgaria, and Ukraine. Saudi Arabia and the U.S. seem to have an agreement on nuclear cooperation that would include the AP-1000. U.S. advanced reactors, including NuScale’s SMR and the GE Vernona Hitachi BWRX-300 have also been embraced by foreign nations including Romania, Poland, Canada, and Japan. And Holtec’s SMR-300 has cleared a critical regulatory review in the U.K. The Trump EOs also call for 20 new bilateral nuclear cooperation agreements to expand the potential market for American nuclear exports. A few have been inked, but the administration lacks an effective strategy for capturing commitments from developing economy countries that are likely candidates for future small-scale nuclear power plants.
Military Microreactors and National Security: A significant advance of the Trump executive orders was declaring U.S. nuclear energy as a national security issue. This has multiple benefits but one is the embrace of the Pentagon of the value of nuclear energy for its missions beyond naval power. The U.S. Army has the lead responsibility for the development of a new class of terrestrial reactors. There are several different initiatives, including Project Pele and the Janus Program, and the reactors being pursued have different missions. Some are required to be transportable by a C-17 and others focused on providing secure power for military installations. The programs also are designed to provide a commercial benefit, as has been the case with other defense technology developments. The Army’s director of reactor development, Jeff Waksman, stated the “U.S. Army is stepping in to absorb that first-of-a--kind risk, so the commercial market can follow, and the national can benefit from broader adoption.”
Patrick Kendall, Program Director, Partnership for Global Security
Ken Luongo, President, Partnership for Global Security
