President Trump’s nuclear energy executive orders aim to revive US nuclear leadership, but a lack of financing and overreliance on regulatory reduction could undermine safety and effectiveness.
President Trump has issued four nuclear energy executive orders (EOs) designed to drive forward an American nuclear energy renaissance. Overall, the EOs offer a chiaroscuro of revitalized policy, with some critical objectives brightly illuminated but the ultimate success of the strategy obscured by strong shadows.
The positives in the collective EOs outweigh the concerns and questions. But an overreliance on the power of “regulatory reduction” won’t move the nuclear deployment needle as much as the president wants.
The real issues are money and markets. And those complex challenges will require considerably more attention by the administration if nuclear energy’s triumph is to be a hallmark of the Trump era.
The Positive
Continuity
An important benefit of the orders is the continuity of support for nuclear energy that began in the first Trump administration and swelled during the Biden administration. The fundamental differences with Biden are Trump’s demand for results over research, the drive to deploy on an accelerated time frame, and the framing of the goal as energy dominance, not clean energy.
Critical to National Security
One key approach to spur deployment is designating nuclear reactor technologies as critical national security assets.
This requires the Department of Energy (DOE) to identify sites for the deployment of advanced reactors that can power artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure like data centers on federal land. AI data centers require city-sized electrical output.
Similarly, the directives build on the Department of Defense’s (DOD) ongoing terrestrial nuclear power program and require an operational reactor at a domestic military base in the next three years.
The Army was given the lead responsibility for this goal, but it is paired with the Air Force as part of the Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations (ANPI) program. The ANPI goal is to operate one or more microreactors for the armed forces. The Air Force has been moving toward a microreactor deployment at its Eielson base in Alaska. Meanwhile, DOD has broken ground on Project Pele, a transportable small high-temperature gas reactor (HGTR) being manufactured by BWX Technologies (BWXT).
Overall, it is likely that using federally owned land for reactor demonstration projects will reduce red tape and accelerate advanced technology demonstration. But hyperscalers, while supporting nuclear power for AI, have yet to commit to collocating data centers on federal land with these reactors, which raises complications.
Reinvigorating Domestic Capabilities
Beyond the criticality of these technologies for national security, the directives also focus on revitalizing domestic nuclear power deployment and American capabilities, including building stronger American supply chains.
A DOE report from last year found that over 60 gigawatts of new nuclear energy could be added to existing nuclear power plant sites. These could be large plants like the AP-1000 or small modular reactors. But no utilities are stepping up to fill these spaces with new reactors.
There are also several requirements for increasing nuclear energy-related education programs, apprenticeships, sustainable professional development, and creating a pilot program for advanced reactor construction outside the national laboratory system.
The directive specifies that the goal is to have at least three “qualified” test reactors operational by July 4, 2026. It further requires DOE to create support teams for this purpose and streamline environmental reviews to expedite this process.
Producing New Nuclear Fuels
The administration’s ambitions for advanced reactors can’t be met without new nuclear fuel production, as the documents note that the US “nuclear fuel infrastructure has severely atrophied.”
It orders the utilization of the Defense Production Act to prioritize agreements with those companies that have demonstrated an ability to produce low-enriched uranium (LEU) and high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) and seeks the production of “at least” 20 tons of the high-assay fuel.
DOE has been pursuing this fuel production expansion for the past several years, but HALEU production has faltered. It is estimatedthat there could be a demand for up to 50 metric tons of HALEU per year by the mid-2030s. But reaching that goal will be a significant challenge.
Expanding Global Exports
The corollary to domestic deployment is promoting US nuclear exports, particularly as part of the technology and geopolitical competition with China and Russia.
The administration seeks 20 new nuclear cooperation agreements with foreign nations by the beginning of 2029. The Biden administration averaged about one of these agreements per year, signing deals with the United Kingdom (UK), Singapore, the Philippines, and Mexico. The Trump edict would require five per year.
Russia already has many more nuclear agreements around the globe than the United States, and China has Belt and Road Initiative partnerships with over 145 nations.
The goal of expanding these agreements is laudable, and the president requires the development of a strategy for how to compete for global nuclear projects by the end of this summer. This is an important roadmap that the previous administration failed to produce.
But the United States has fallen woefully short in cultivating the necessary nuclear partnerships outside of developed nations, particularly in developing economies, where the need for reliable and clean power is dramatically growing. There are many potential partnership targets in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Latin America. But they also face hurdles.
The nuclear agreements have to be submitted to Congress, where they can be rejected or modified. Some of the 20 nations the administration is targeting, like Saudi Arabia, will create a political backlash. And others may raise safety and security questions.
The potential political problems may be manageable, but capturing international market share won’t work without more money. This is why the EOs commitment to developing better approaches to export financing and recipient-country technical assistance is so vital.
Both the Export-Import Bank and the Development Finance Corporation are up for congressional reauthorization. This is a prime opportunity to expand their mandate and financing. This is especially important now that the World Bank has ended its ban on funding nuclear power projects and can be a new partner.
But even billions in additional export credit won’t be used effectively if the nations most in need of smaller reactors are unprepared for their operation. Virtually all the potential target nations will be woefully unprepared to import and operate a complicated nuclear reactor of any size.
The US government’s nuclear power assistance programs are slow and, like the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Milestone Approach, anticipate a multi-decade incremental process of preparation.
The administration could short-circuit that process and assemble teams that can operate exported reactors while capacity is simultaneously being developed in the recipient nation. Once adequately prepared for reactor operation, it can be handed off to the host nation. This is one way to compete with the model Russia has exploited in its rise as the world’s largest nuclear exporter.
The Problematic
The executive orders have some significant problems and touch on potential danger zones.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission & Regulatory Reform
The primary criticism of the nuclear energy executive orders has been a series of reforms proposed for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that are designed to decrease red tape. Regulatory reduction in all forms is a core concern for the Trump administration and at the heart of its governing strategy.
But nuclear regulation is fundamentally different from its commercial cousin. There is a risk of overreaching on regulatory reduction that can lead to problems that undermine public support for expanded nuclear power.
The NRC sets a global standard for nuclear safety and security, and other nations follow this lead. So, their processes need to be robust and credible.
But the influx of new reactor designs requires flexibility and faster evaluation. Congress recognized this and several years ago legislated that the NRC modernize its evaluation processes for a new era of reactor technologies. They are moving toward this goal,but the process hasn’t been perfect.
Overall, regulatory reform alone is not going to substantially shorten new reactor deployment timelines. It may contribute, but there are myriad other technical and financial challenges that will slow nuclear deployment.
Plutonium & Recycling
The Trump mandates push the envelope on spent nuclear fuel reprocessing and the use of plutonium in the civil fuel cycle.
This is in sync with the previous administration but moves beyond Biden’s efforts that provided tens of millions of dollars to study spent fuel reprocessing projects through the Optimizing Nuclear Waste and Advanced Reactors Disposal Systems (ONWARDS), Converting UNF Radioisotopes Into Energy (CURIE), and ultimately the Nuclear Energy Waste Transmutation Optimized Now (NEWTON) programs at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).
With several prominent advanced reactors designed to run on plutonium or recycled fuel, the focus on this issue is warranted.
While caution is necessary because of the inherent nuclear weapons potential of separated plutonium, the US national security policy on plutonium separation is in dire need of updating.
It needs to balance the trade-offs between nuclear security and commercial competitiveness in this new era. If advanced reactors using plutonium fuel can realistically compete for market share against similar Russian and Chinese technologies, there is a national security benefit to supporting those reactors. But that will need to be weighed against the confidence that a plutonium-fueled reactor and associated recycling infrastructure can be adequately controlled and safeguarded to prevent weapons proliferation.
Paucity of Partnerships
Despite the Made in the USA stamp of the Trump directives, the United States alone is not able to compete with Russia and China in the nuclear marketplace. And the Trump directives ignore the value of international partnerships.
American supply chains are weak. Russian and Chinese nuclear industries have hot production lines and order books. And their state subsidization of nuclear exports cannot be matched by the American government alone.
A natural coalition of democratic nuclear partners would include Canada, the UK, France, Japan, and South Korea. South Korea is particularly important because there is a significant dependency on key Korean industries, including the manufacture of reactor containment domes, which the United States can no longer produce.
South Korea also has a good record of constructing reactors on time and within budget.
Under the Accelerating Deployment of Versatile Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act, foreign nations can now have ownership in US nuclear plants. This opens the door to a US-Korean (KORUS) collaboration on domestic nuclear deployment as well as in third countries.
The Implausible
There are elements of the nuclear energy executive orders that seem outside the realm of reality.
Schedule
The timelines are unrealistic in many cases. Some goals are desired within four months, and others in four years. And having “10 new large reactors with complete designs under construction by 2030” is just a fantasy. The system doesn’t work that fast and can’t be reformed that quickly. It is highly unlikely that many of the timeframes and deadlines can be achieved.
Demand
In part, the goals can’t be reached because the demand from American utilities for new nuclear reactor construction doesn’t exist. Two reactors in Michigan and Pennsylvania will be brought back to life, and one in Illinois may expand through an agreement with Meta. But two reactors at the Virgil C. Summer Generating Station in South Carolina continue to sit half-constructed, crippled by cost overruns.
Financing
The biggest problem with the collection of Trump’s nuclear directives is that it doesn’t identify any additional financing or underwriting that can fuel deployment at scale. The Secretary of Energy has stated that regulatory reform will incentivize private sector investment. But that is unlikely based on past experience.
Without real financing and the related cultivation of markets, the Trump administration may achieve a reformation of the government’s disparate nuclear energy agencies with its executive orders. But it won’t result in a Renaissance.
About the Author: Kenneth Luongo
Kenneth Luongo is the president and founder of the Partnership for Global Security (PGS) and the Center for a Secure Nuclear Future.
Image: Coompia77/Shutterstock
