Companies break ground on new generation of nuclear power plants after Trump directive

By EPN Staff

Just six months after President Donald Trump directed the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to reinvigorate America’s nuclear sector, several companies have surpassed important milestones in bringing the first American Small Modular Reactor (SMR) online. 

SMR, the next generation of nuclear reactors, are smaller and less costly to construct than traditional nuclear reactors, and can be prefabricated, transported and assembled on-site. 

Rising energy demands from data centers and electrification has spurred interest in building new nuclear power capacity. A recent study by S&P Global predicts that the U.S. will need three times as much grid power by 2030. 

Why it matters

Nuclear power produces abundant, reliable power. Unlike other forms of carbon-free power such as wind and solar, nuclear reactors take up far less space and are not subject to fluctuations in weather.  

While there are 54 commercially operating nuclear power plants with 94 nuclear reactors located in 28 states, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, most of them were constructed between 1970 and 1990. 

The need for more clean, reliable power and recent technological breakthroughs prompted the Trump Administration to address bureaucratic hurdles to new construction. 

On May 23, Trump issued four executive orders to modernize federal nuclear regulations, expedite testing, bolster the nuclear workforce and increase domestic nuclear fuel production with the intention of expanding capacity from 100 GW to 400 GW by 2050.   

A gigawatt (GW) is equal to one billion watts. Six GW of electricity can power 4.5 million homes or 60 new large-scale data centers.

Additionally, the DOE will expedite the testing of 11 nuclear pilot programs with the goal of getting at least three reactors in operation by July 4, 2026.

The bigger picture

Multiple companies have or will soon break ground on new, innovative nuclear power plants. 

• X-energy is planning to build an SMR plant near Richland, Washington, the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility, in partnership with Energy Northwest and Amazon. X-energy has also started building a first-of-its-kind advanced nuclear fuel fabrication facility in Tennessee to manufacture fuel for SMRs. The plant will generate X-energy’s tristructural-isotropic (TRISO) fuel for the first Xe-100 plant at Dow, Inc.’s Texas Gulf Coast site and future sites. 
• California-based Deep Fission, one of 11 nuclear pilot programs selected by Trump last August, has announced plans to build SMRs one mile underground in sites in Texas, Utah and Kansas. 
• NuScale Power announced the company will collaborate with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and ENTRA1 Energy to deliver up to 6 GW of SMR-generated power across the seven state service region served by TVA making it the largest deployment of the new technology yet.  
• Holtec International, a nuclear energy technology company, Hi Tech Solutions LLC, which specializes in nuclear power support services, and the State of Utah agreed to build the Mountain West’s first nuclear energy “ecosystem.” The comprehensive system will integrate new SMR-generated energy with training, workforce development, and local manufacturing.  

Additional details

China and Russia have operational SMRs while Argentina, Canada, South Korea and the U.S. are in the process of building or licensing, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.