By John Haughey
Ten companies are developing “first mover” nuclear energy innovations in breakneck bids to achieve “criticality” by July 4, 2026, to secure federal funding in advancing their technologies under an Energy Reactor Pilot Program authorized by President Donald Trump.
“I doubt they will all make it,” Idaho National Laboratory Director John Wagner said. “But the thing that’s really exciting is that I do think three can make it, and the others will follow quickly thereafter.”
The “great reactor race” announced by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) in August comes with the “most aggressive nuclear-deployment timelines in American history” in an effort to license 10 new reactors by 2030 and quadruple the nation’s nuclear energy capacity by 2050, goals outlined in the president’s four May 23 executive orders, he said.
The incentives appear to be working, Wagner told the House Energy and Commerce Energy Subcommittee during a four-hour Jan. 7 hearing.
“So while July 4 is a major milestone,” most won’t meet, “there’s an August and a September and October that will follow,” he said. “I think we will see quite a number of these reactors [achieve] initial demonstration in 2026 that will lead to commercial deployment.”
U.S. companies are developing more than 30 reactor designs. They include portable and small modular reactors; reactors fueled by electric-pressurized water, molten salt, and recycled fuel; reactors cooled by sodium and liquid metal; and reactors fracked a mile deep to pipe steam to the surface.
They are among innovations spurred by successive administrations and Congress—in rare bipartisan accord—in deregulating and subsidizing nuclear development to meet a projected 25 percent increase in electricity demand by 2030 and a 70 percent increase by 2050.
“The importance of successful growth of the American nuclear energy cannot be understated,” Subcommittee Chair Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio) said.
“We need firm, reliable power and more of it. We need power for emerging industrial output in the AI race, also for homes and businesses.”
That will require an effort similar to President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1953 Atoms for Peace plan that convinced Congress to revise the Atomic Energy Act to remove barriers to civilian applications of nuclear technology, he said.
But “this moment differs from past nuclear ‘renaissances’ in fundamental ways,” Wagner said in his testimony.
“We stand at an unprecedented inflection point for American nuclear energy. For the first time in decades, market forces, national-security imperatives, and federal policy have achieved remarkable alignment.
“The question is no longer whether America needs nuclear energy, but how much, how quickly, and how to make it happen.”
Six Steps
The United States maintains the world’s largest nuclear power industry with 94 reactors operated by 21 power companies at 54 sites across 28 states.
They produce nearly 20 percent of the nation’s electricity and employ 70,000 Americans who support 250,000 jobs.
The industry contributes more than $60 billion annually to the country’s gross domestic product and pays $12 billion a year in federal, state, and local taxes, according to the Washington-based Nuclear Energy Institute.
But since 1990, while 18 reactors have been retired, only two new ones—Southern Nuclear Operating Company’s Georgia Power Vogtle 3 and 4 plants—have been built in the United States.
The reasons include costs, regulatory entanglements that can take more than a decade to get a reactor from concept to concrete, and public perception in the wake of the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima nuclear accidents.
While the domestic industry has stagnated, developers from Russia and China are securing contracts to build as many as 70 reactors worldwide this decade, a market estimated to be worth up to $740 billion built from U.S.-developed technologies, the institute maintains.
But domestic developers are “stepping up to meet this moment,” Nuclear Energy Institute President and CEO Maria Korsnick testified.
Korsnick cited the institute’s 2025 utility survey, which “found plant owners are pursuing license renewals at 26 units and ‘power uprates’ at 29 units, extending fuel cycles at 12 units, and advancing plant restarts in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Iowa over the next five years.”
More than $22 billion in capital investment is committed to improve and expand the current reactor fleet in the next 10 years.
“These actions represent fast and cost-effective ways to add clean, reliable capacity,” she said.
“However,” Korsnick continued, “there is more to be done. The task now is to build on that foundation—to translate early progress in new nuclear deployment into a sustained, large-scale buildout by addressing the remaining barriers hampering the transition from initial projects to repeatable commercial deployment.”
She spelled out six institute priorities, beginning with “timely implementation of modernized processes and regulations” administered by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), included in “100 detailed recommendations” to assist “in translating these directives into concrete changes in licensing, oversight, and inspection practices.”
Korsnick said Congress must address “early-mover financial risk to accelerate new reactor deployment,” establish a secure domestic nuclear fuel supply chain, develop a comprehensive, durable national strategy for used fuel management, build “a robust workforce,” and “support U.S. competitiveness in global markets” by promoting domestic developers as a component of foreign policy.
“The next generation of nuclear energy has moved from concept toward initial projects,” she said, “but sustaining this momentum will require turning early progress into repeatable, large-scale commercial deployment.”
‘Nth-of-a-Kind’
The nation’s domestic nuclear fuel supply chain—an institute priority identified by Korsnick—got a $2.72 billion boost when DOE announced on Jan. 5 it had issued three awards to enrich low-enriched uranium (LEU) and high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU).
Maryland’s Centrus Energy’s American Centrifuge Operating plant in Piketon, Ohio; California-based General Matter’s Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in western Kentucky; and North Carolina-headquartered Orano Group’s Federal Service’s operation in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, each received $900 million to develop nuclear fuel.
A half-century ago, the United States was the world’s largest uranium producer.
In 1980, domestic operators produced and processed 44 million pounds of yellowcake, about 90 percent of the uranium used domestically, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
By 2021, only 5 percent of the uranium used in the United States was produced domestically, with Canada (27 percent), Kazakhstan (25 percent), Russia (12 percent), Uzbekistan (11 percent), and Australia (9 percent) the leading suppliers.
Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine underlined the urgency for the United States to end reliance on imported uranium from Russia and Kazakhstan, spurring Congress to adopt the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act in February 2024.
The bill and $2.72 billion “represent significant progress toward addressing these vulnerabilities, but execution timeline is critical to success,” Wagner said.
“Building enrichment capacity typically requires seven to 10 years from design to full operation, meaning investments made today will only begin producing material in the early 2030s.”
Southern Nuclear Company Senior Vice President John Williams said his company, one of 13 subsidiaries owned by Atlanta-based Southern Company, which provides power for nine million customers across six states and operates eight nuclear units in Georgia and Alabama, has learned lessons in building the Vogtle plants that could accelerate timelines to have reactors ready for that domestic fuel.
He called on Congress to take “several actions” that could “bridge the gap” between “first movers”—those who build the prototypes of new technologies—and those who build “Nth-of-a-Kind,” when “a technology is mature, repeatable, and cost-effective after multiple successful deployments.”
After building Vogtle 3’s Westinghouse AP 1000 reactor, “We did see significant cost reductions and schedule improvements” when building Vogtle 4, Williams said, “which you expect as you implement a first-of-a-kind technology, moving to second-of-a-kind technology, moving onto third-of-a-kind, ultimately to Nth-of-a-Kind.”
To get to “Nth-of-a-Kind,” Congress must bolster Investment Tax Credits “to moderate the large initial capital investment associated with the construction of new nuclear plants,” he testified, “mitigate ’tail risk’”—construction schedule delays and unanticipated costs—and relax Internal Revenue Service “limitations on transferability of tax credits.”
Staffing, Safety Concerns
Nuclear Innovation Alliance President and CEO Judi Greenwald in her testimony said among key priorities for congressional action is ensure DOE “has sufficient staffing and resources to match the ambition of recent legislation and executive orders; safeguard NRC’s regulatory integrity, transparency, and public trust; and maintain bipartisan support to ensure stable policy and predictable investment environments that withstand political cycles.”
Committee Democrats cited those priorities while criticizing the Trump administration for cutting DOE’s workforce by 3,500—slowing loan processing for more than $250 billion in lending capacity—and for firing NRC Commissioner Christopher Hanson in June.
Greenwald praised the $2.72 billion for fuel development but noted that $3.4 billion in awards for similar projects remain unallocated.
“I support safe nuclear energy. It’s clean, it runs around the clock, and it provides much-needed energy security,” Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) said, before criticizing Trump for firing Hanson “without cause.”
Pallone said Trump’s May executive orders harm transparency by demanding all rule-makings from the NRC get approval from the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
“Instead, NRC commissioners are prevented from making public what they’re voting on until the White House has approved it, and that’s not how an independent agency should work,” he said.
Reps. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), Marc Veasey (D-Texas), and Rob Menendez (D-N.J.) also criticized the administration for reducing DOE staff and firing Hanson.
They each queried panel witnesses about the stability of the commission and received acknowledgements of concern.
Pallone said if congressional Republicans want to accelerate nuclear development, “Democrats must have full and complete confidence in the safety of our nuclear fleet.”
