A longer version of this article was published by The Center for the National Interest and it can be found here.
The Trump administration’s strategy for achieving America’s domination of the global nuclear energy market is coming into focus. But its ultimate effectiveness remains in question.
A first step has been the preservation (so far), in the Big Beautiful Budget Reconciliation Bill, of some key credits for nuclear power that originally were contained in Biden-era clean energy legislation. The second step is the imminent release of the administration’s nuclear energy executive orders.
The administration is hoping to preserve the momentum for nuclear energy that has steadily risen over the last half-decade, but do it in a less expensive way, particularly by streamlining nuclear regulation.
But focusing on regulatory reform won’t overcome the critical issue of private sector financing fears and it may exacerbate them.
Congress already has instructed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to streamline its safety standards to accommodate new small and advanced reactors. The agency is acting on this direction and working with over two dozen different reactor vendors.
Further slimming the regulatory process is unlikely to leapfrog small and advanced reactors forward before a 2030 timeframe because of fuel availability and technology limitations.
The administration plans to overcome these challenges by accelerating fuel availability and using federal land to build small reactors that can power artificial intelligence data centers. U.S. energy demand escalation is being driven by AI and the administration has made winning that technology race against China a top priority.
Demonstrating new reactor technologies on federal land may be a workaround that circumvents the need for NRC approval. But throwing regulatory caution to the wind can pose a danger to the overall nuclear renaissance the administration is trying to push forward. Public confidence is critical to deployment at scale, and one accident can kill global nuclear energy momentum, as was the case with Three Mile Island and Fukushima.
The real problem the administration faces is that it is unclear where the commercial drive and financing for already-licensed, large reactor expansion in America will come from. No nuclear power reactors are under construction in the United States and there’s no prospect of that changing in the near term.
Utilities are gun-shy about going all-in on nuclear energy because of the massive cost overruns and delays at the Vogtle plants in Georgia and the unknown costs of building a first-of-a-kind of any small reactor.
A monument to this fear is the two partially completed Westinghouse AP-1000 reactors in South Carolina at the Virgil C. Summer (V.C.) Nuclear Power Station. They have been mothballed for eight years after an investment of $9 billion.
Without a resurgence of nuclear deployment at home, there is little chance of market control abroad. And without both domestic and export cylinders aggressively cycling together, the dream of America’s global nuclear energy dominance will dissipate.
To realize its ambition, the administration will have to diversify its thinking beyond deeming deregulation as the singular silver bullet. That won’t be enough to move nuclear finance from virtue signaling to actual deployment support.
There are two additional actions the administration should consider.
One is to partner with foreign allies on nuclear projects in the United States. A South Korea-U.S. partnership (KORUS) could reduce the U.S. financial commitment to push forward domestic deployment of large and small reactors. It will bring into play not just Korean financial support but potentially petro-state financing from the Middle East.
Korea has cultivated nuclear energy engagement with both the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia. And Korea and the UAE have agreed to pursue “joint nuclear power projects abroad.” A potential U.S.-Saudi reactor deal adds another dimension and will necessarily include Korea.
A U.S-South Korea-Persian Gulf nuclear power alliance could be a powerful and financially sustainable counterweight to the state-financed nuclear dominance of Russia and China.
Second, the administration needs to bolster its overseas nuclear financing capability. Congress will soon have to reauthorize the Development Finance Corporation and the Export-Import Bank.
These organizations are supporting nuclear projects in Poland and Romania, but under current legislation, neither has sufficient funds to finance U.S. nuclear exports abroad at scale. Both of these agencies should be provided greater flexibility and financing to become stronger assets in nuclear export.
Ken Luongo, President, Partnership for Global Security
