Post-inauguration and as Donald Trump settles into the Oval Office and begins his second term as President of the USA, what are the potential implications of his presidency for the energy industry, and particularly the nuclear sector?
The likely energy priorities of the administration have so far been set out on the campaign trail, where Trump famously called for the country to “drill, baby, drill” for fossil extraction. The incoming president also announced plans to cut back on clean air and emissions reduction measures. Trump’s famed rhetoric also placed heavy reliance on making the US a major energy exporter – pushing at an open door, as the US is already an exporter of significant volumes of gas, for example, after investment in recent years in export terminals. But the administration may undermine its ability to deliver on export plans if it goes ahead with plans to deport large numbers of workers who are undocumented or who have limited rights to live and work in the USA. As the UK has found post-Brexit, erecting barriers to the movement of expert or skilled workers can put a brake on delivering industrial plans.
The president’s picks for roles in his administration apparently share his aim of increasing fossil exports and cutting back on climate programmes. But Trump and his team could nonetheless give a boost to plans for a nuclear renaissance.
Trump’s nominee for energy secretary is Chris Wright, chief executive until 2017 of oilfield services group Liberty Energy and founder of fracking specialist Pinnacle. Wright has been a public sceptic on climate change, arguing in a LinkedIn post that “there is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either,” and although he later insisted that he was not fighting “climate science,” he declined to say that the claims were incorrect. However, Wright has already actively embraced the nuclear industry as a board member of Oklo Inc, which is developing nuclear plants it describes as ‘fast fission’, using reprocessed uranium and transuranic elements as fuel. Oklo received a site use permit from the US Department of Energy and is developing advanced fuel recycling technologies in collaboration with the US Department of Energy (DOE).
It is not clear how the new energy secretary’s role will interconnect with that of Trump’s Interior Secretary, for which position he has nominated Doug Burgum, currently governor of North Dakota. Burgum will also head a new National Energy Council, which is expected to give the green light to energy extraction from the areas managed by the interior department, which includes federally-owned land and national parks. Trump has said the new National Energy Council will cut through regulations and “oversee the path to US energy dominance”. The Politico website quoted Trump as saying that the National Energy Council “will consist of all Departments and Agencies involved in the permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation, transportation, of ALL forms of American Energy”.
Trump also said the new Council would ensure there were no blackouts and brownouts and ensure there is enough energy for new AI facilities. This could give impetus to plans to build small modular reactors (SMRs) at the sites of large energy users such as data centres, as well as smoothing the regulatory path to siting reactors on green field or existing sites. That would support Trump’s plans, highlighted by Politico, to reform permitting and speed up energy industry deployment.
A third player in delivering a new energy sector could be Jacob Helberg, nominated as Undersecretary Of State For Economic Growth, Energy And The Environment. Helberg is a technology company advisor and also currently senior advisor to the Chief Executive of Palantir Technologies, who also serves on the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
Building on past achievements?
Trump’s first term as President of the USA spanned from January 2017 to January 2021. When he left office, the US DOE’s Office for Nuclear Energy (ONE) listed ‘11 Accomplishments of the Trump administration in advanced nuclear energy’. It could be argued that most would support Trump’s current agenda, if one of Trump’s key aims for his new presidency is to maximise the US’s homegrown energy sources, reduce the country’s reliance on foreign suppliers and make fossil fuels available for export.
The ONE highlighted Units 3 and 4 at Vogtle as “the first new nuclear reactors to begin construction in the USA in more than three decades”. In fact their long gestation period began long before the Trump administration and included redesign of the AP1000 reactors involved. However, during the Trump presidency in March 2019 further federal loan guarantees of $3.7bn were given to the various build partners, taking total federal loan guarantees up to $12bn. At the time the facility was expected to begin operation in 2021. The plant took slightly longer to come into to operation. Unit 3 began commercial operations on 31 July, 2023. Meanwhile, unit 4 entered commercial operation on 29 April, 2024.
Several of the achievements noted are around supporting new reactor offerings, and at the time ONE noted investment of more than $170m over two years to accelerate the development of advanced nuclear reactor technologies. It included supporting industry efforts to design and submit a NRC licence application for a new TRISO fuel fabrication facility, launching the Molten Salts in Extreme Environments (MSEE) centre, and moving forward with plans to build a Versatile Test Reactor that would use high energy neutrons to speed up the testing of advanced technologies needed by new designs and the existing fleet. It also included working with the Department of Defense to demonstrate and deploy microreactors. It is worth noting that another of the achievements cited was the appointment of Dr Rita Baranwal as the first woman to lead the Office of Nuclear Energy. She was confirmed to that position by the Senate on 20 June 2019 and served until January 2021. But she is now directly working on new reactor development as Senior Vice President of AP300 SMR.
ONE named ‘siting the nation’s first small modular reactor’ as an achievement. It said “the nation’s first small modular reactor (SMR) is on track to be operating at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) by 2026. DOE is supporting the siting of a 12-module SMR plant.” However, in November 2023 the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) and NuScale Power Corporation (NuScale) agreed to terminate the so-called ‘Carbon Free Power Project’ which would have seen a NuScale SMR built at INL.
ONE achievements during Trump’s term also included establishing the National Reactor Innovation Center, which provides a platform for private sector technology developers to assess the performance of their reactor concepts through testing and demonstration. The centre continues to be funded, receiving $20m in 2023 (which also saw $120m for Risk Reduction for Future Demonstrations, and $60m for the ARDP Demonstration Reactor). In 2017 the Trump administration also brought the Transient Reactor Test Facility (TREAT) at INL back online, after more than two decades in standby mode. TREAT allows scientists to examine fuel performance under simulated accident conditions.
Trump’s first term saw ONE begin “looking into multiple options to provide small amounts of high assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) for testing and demonstration of these technologies”. HALEU is not currently commercially available from US suppliers and the DOE is pursuing several pathways to secure a domestic supply, and the Energy Act of 2020 established the HALEU Availability Program to ensure access to HALEU and spur demand for private investment in HALEU production.
That programme continued to be funded by the Biden-Harris Administration’s Investing in America agenda, which noted that gaps in supply could delay the deployment of advanced reactors in a timeframe that supports the nation’s net-zero emissions targets by 2050. Recently the DOE promised up to $16m through a new HALEU Transportation Package Funding Opportunity to “research, develop, and acquire Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing for HALEU transportation packages”. It said many advanced reactor designs require HALEU to achieve smaller designs, longer operating cycles, and increased efficiencies over current technologies, but there are limited licensed options to transport HALEU.
Programmes like the development and siting of new types of small reactor that are US-designed and built would seem to sit happily in the new administration’s stated plans to boost domestic energy supplies (and potentially export SMRs to overseas customers). Initiatives like the HALEU Availability Program, to ensure the US can supply its own fuel, also seem to be on-message for Trump.
Domestically, it suggests the US nuclear industry could see its star rise under the new administration, even as other low-carbon technologies such as offshore wind lose political support. Indeed, while nuclear progress and support probably has to take a different route than the provisions covering low-carbon generation introduced under the Biden administration, such as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), domestic nuclear is expected to receive continued support under thew new Trump presidency.
The industry could also have support from the new administration on the international stage.
The ONE named as its final achievement during Trump’s first term that it saw DOE launch the NICE Future initiative in 2018. This global effort led by the USA, Canada, and Japan aimed to “ensure nuclear energy receives appropriate representation in high-level discussions about clean energy”. The industry will hope to retain that backing in the coming years.
