President Donald Trump on Friday signed orders meant to accelerate the construction of nuclear power plants, including small, untested designs that offer the promise of rapid deployment but haven’t yet been built in the US, APA reports citing THE BUSINESS TIMES.
The effort is a bid to meet a coming surge in electricity demand and help the US reclaim its edge in nuclear energy. While the country was once the leader in deploying and producing nuclear power, it’s finished building only two new reactors in the last 30 years and shuttered existing plants, even as China and Russia race to deploy them.
Trump’s initiative to unleash nuclear energy could give a boost to an emission-free source of power that’s championed as a climate-friendly alternative to electricity generated by burning coal and natural gas. However, the president has cast nuclear energy as a complement, rather than a replacement, for fossil fuels.
“We’re signing tremendous executive orders today that really will make us the real power in this industry,” Trump said as he issued the directives in the Oval Office, adding that nuclear technology “has come a long way, both in safety and costs.”
Trump was joined by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and energy industry executives including Constellation Energy CEO Joseph Dominguez and Jake DeWitte of Oklo.
The initiative represents the latest bid by an American president to jump-start the domestic nuclear industry, which has languished in recent decades. Former president Joe Biden last year laid out a plan to triple US nuclear capacity by 2050, and Trump’s new plan aims to quadruple it. It also comes as technology companies are clamouring for power to supply energy-hungry data centres.
The effort is likely to give a boost to companies developing small reactors, including Last Energy, Oklo, TerraPower and NuScale Power.
One of the orders also aims to get 10 large, conventional reactors under construction by 2030, potentially benefiting Westinghouse Electric, whose gigawatt-scale AP1000 design was the last commercial nuclear unit built in the US and has been embraced worldwide.
Trump’s nuclear initiative also would encourage the use of government financing to support the restart of shuttered nuclear plants, target five gigawatts worth of upgrades at existing sites and help spur the completion of others – potentially aiding South Carolina utility Santee Cooper’s bid to resume building two reactors at its VC Summer plant, where soaring costs prompted the company to halt construction in 2017.
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