Four executive orders are being drafted by the White House and are expected to be issued in the coming weeks as the Trump administration gears up to expand nuclear energy production and streamline permitting.
The idea is to enhance the ability of the Department of Energy and Department of Defense to deploy prototype and demonstration reactors with the promise of commercial applications — even potentially absent oversight by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
“We are trying to knock things over that we can that are regulatory,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright told the House Appropriations Committee in a May 7 hearing and reported by Energy Intelligence.
“There will be catalyzing regulatory events to bring” in “tens of billions of dollars” in private capital, “mostly from hyperscalers.”
Taken together, the executive orders are meant to amplify the collaboration between the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy for the advancement of new nuclear technologies.
The NRC is engaged with more than two dozen vendors and developers in pre-application design work and has been actively developing a regulatory pathway for new reactor designs.
This week, the NRC formalized a decision for a construction exemption to allow TerraPower to construct its energy island while the regulatory agency continues with completing the review process for its Natrium plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming.
“Our innovative design, that decouples the nuclear reactor from the energy generating facilities, allows us to shorten construction schedules and reduce material costs; making the Natrium technology one of the fastest and most cost-effective solutions to deploy to help meet growing energy demand," said TerraPower President and Chief Executive Officer Chris Levesque.
Elsewhere in Wyoming, data center developer Prometheus Hyperscale is building a massive one-gigawatt facility and will be using unique battery storage to power the large project in Evanston, not far from Utah’s border.
In his testimony in April, Wright praised Idaho National Laboratory for taking the “lead in nuclear commercial technology” and “launching the nuclear renaissance from the test reactors that’ll be done there to the scientists” that are “collaborating with virtually all of the next generation commercial reactor developers.”
2 types of oversight and the stumbling blocks
The DOD has its own set of internal nuclear safety oversight over nuclear activities, including naval nuclear reactors, while the Energy Department has had internal oversight over a specific subset of activities on its own land not intended for commercial application.
The licensing contradictions create a lack of clarity, especially as advanced nuclear technologies inch their way into the market to provide power to the grid.
During his first week in office, Trump declared a national energy emergency, especially in light of the weakening of the grid and new demands posed by artificial intelligence and data centers.
One solution that many large technology companies (known as “hyperscalers”) are exploring is the co-location of data centers and new nuclear generation. Large data centers require vast supplies of dedicated, around-the-clock, firm power.
Utah is on the list of future data center buildout sites “under active consideration” by OpenAI. Other states competing for the investments include Arizona, California, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and West Virginia. OpenAI says additional site selections may be added later this year.
A report issued last November by Power Engineering notes Utah is poised to be one of the fastest-growing data center markets in the country and estimates near-term growth in the Salt Lake region of 699%, second only to Las Vegas/Reno, Nevada.
Utah has front-runner aspirations
Utah’s top GOP officials are actively in the race to host this technology and have stressed the state, and the rest of the nation, need to get on board.
In April, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox convened “Built Here,” a nuclear summit designed to bring the best minds and biggest players to the table to help get Utah better positioned in the arena of nuclear energy development.
China has 30 nuclear reactors under construction, Utah’s governor said.
But in his lifetime, only a very few have been built in the United States.
The same push was echoed earlier at a Park City conference last October in which Utah Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, and then-Rep. John Curtis, R-Utah, emphasized the need for Utah to be a front-runner in the development of nuclear energy options.