TRUMP’S NUCLEAR PLAN | POLICY & FINANCE
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
www.neimagazine.com | January 2025 | 37
Above left: Trump’s nominee for energy secretary, Chris Wright, is a board member of nuclear company Oklo Inc. Source: Oklo
Above right: In 2017 the Trump administration brought the Transient Reactor Test Facility (TREAT) back on line at INL Source: DOE
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