OPINION | DAVID HESS
Trump, US politics and the atom
President Trump is sending shockwaves across the world and the nuclear sector is no exception. How Trump administration plays its hand will have profound implications for the evolution of the world’s nuclear industries.
David Hess, Senior VP DeepGeo
HERE ARE FAMOUS ‘DO NOTS’ one really must keep track of. For example, never get involved in a land-war in Asia. This is unquestionably sound advice. Never talk about religion at parties also springs to mind as good general social etiquette. There are some subjects that it is simply
best not to broach. Some places where you ought not to go. For many, Donald Trump is also one such subject. Politics and political leaders more generally fall into this category, but Trump is such a polarizing figure – generating more furious headlines in a single week than most political leaders manage in a year – that it is perhaps best not to mention him at all. Increasingly, however, Trump is becoming impossible to ignore by the nuclear industry. His sudden and unexpected actions are sending shockwaves throughout the industry, both within the USA and globally.
©Alexy Kovynev It is fair to say that the US nuclear sector has traditionally
leaned right. This is hardly surprising given the nuclear scepticism of some former Democrat representatives, such as Al Gore. This has been far less true in recent years with the establishment of bipartisan support for nuclear energy – although the parties obviously prefer radically different approaches. On social media platform X, nuclear energy advocate Mark Nelson described the Biden administration as the most pro-nuclear Democrat administration since the 1960s, in response to a Biden-led plan for 200 GW of additional nuclear capacity to be installed within the country by 2050. The Inflation Reduction Act, which was enacted into law in 2022, also contains explicit support mechanisms for nuclear energy along with other clean energy technologies as part of a broad decarbonisation agenda. By contrast, back in 2018 and under the first Trump
“Stop what you are doing, the White House has prohibited any switching until the DOGE people figure out which ones can be cancelled.”
14 | April 2025 |
www.neimagazine.com
presidency, then energy secretary Rick Perry was ordered by Trump to take steps to preserve ‘fuel-secure’ power plants. He proposed a strategy to create a strategic generation reserve that would have compelled grid operators to buy electricity from ‘at-risk’ coal and nuclear plants. This was in response to a wave of coal and nuclear plant closures, primarily driven by the rise of super-cheap fracked natural gas. This proposal was ultimately shot down by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission which saw it as an unnecessary intervention into existing markets. In general terms, the Democrats are committed to climate action while the Republicans are sceptical and instead support the deregulation of energy and the implementation of a pro-business ‘all of the above’ energy strategy. In energy-triangle terms, the Democrats prioritise reducing the environmental impacts of energy while Republicans prioritise energy resilience and security. In practice, however, this has translated into varying levels of support for specific energy technologies. Democrats favour renewables while Republicans show affection for fossil fuels. The energy-tribalism is pretty clear. Even though nuclear energy is now nominally supported by both parties it somehow finds itself lost in the middle, not
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