The Trump administration has promised a “nuclear energy renaissance,” backing plans to build a fleet of new power plants and reopen at least three that were recently shuttered. He wants to quadruple the U.S.’s nuclear power by 2050.
And Trump isn’t the only president who has lauded the power of nuclear energy; former President Joe Biden also thought it could be a solution to some of the country’s energy problems.
As electricity demand rises, politicians are reconsidering a power source long plagued by high costs and lengthy construction timelines. How big a role will nuclear play in the country’s future energy mix?
Katy Huff, associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, was the Department of Energy’s assistant secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy from 2022 to 2024.
“ If you work backwards from net-zero goals by 2050, for example, then you need an incredible amount of nuclear energy,” Huff said. “It rivals the fastest rate that we’ve ever produced new nuclear power plants in this country.”
5 questions with Katy Huff
We’ve only seen two new nuclear reactors come online in the past decade, at the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia in 2023. Those reactors were seven years late and $17 billion over budget. Why is it so difficult to build this stuff?
“ Delays and cost overruns are often because each nuclear power plant build is treated as a first-of-a-kind project. You know, imagine trying to build a commercial airplane when every single part has to be custom-designed and approved by the regulator for the first time. That’s really slow and expensive until you get to a place where you no longer have to approve those parts and design approaches and construction processes.
“But ideally, if you can build more of them on a quick pace shortly after the first few, then you should see some lessons learned. But new reactor designs are also being proposed as well, and they’ll face those first-of-a-kind risks for the first few units.”
One promising technology that we’ve been hearing about for years is something called a small modular reactor. They’re smaller than these typical nuclear plants and, in theory, they’re cheaper and easier to get the permitting for.
How likely are those at this point to play a big role in the future energy mix?
“ I think because those capital costs are going to be lower per unit because they’re a little bit more flexible in terms of deployment in fleets. The hope is that we’ll also get to that nth-of-a-kind quicker if each unit is smaller, but per megawatt hour generated, they probably will be slightly more expensive than the bigger units, which get economies of scale.
“How realistic is it that they’re being built? Well, some of them are being built right now.”
The Biden administration was looking to nuclear power to fulfill some of its climate priorities, but Trump is interested for different reasons. He’s promising $80 billion to build nuclear reactors.
His energy secretary, Chris Wright, said on CNBC last month that early projects will receive government subsidies. How does that sound to you?
“ Because of the enormous capital investment required to build a big, complex, precise machine, government support has played a key role in unlocking private investment, especially through the loan programs office.
“But just as important are those committed customers, whether it’s companies like Dow Chemical or chip manufacturers or data centers. That early demand also helps to reduce risk and build those first few reactors, after which we hope the costs will come down rapidly.”
What is a reasonable timeline for a nuclear revival like this? If we’re talking about meeting electricity demand that’s rising rapidly right now, is a nuclear build-out too slow to be of much help?
“ I think that is a real concern. In order to meet that moment, you’re going to have to build nuclear power plants on time and on budget, even if those budgets are fairly high initially.
“And some of those schedules will take a decade to get a reactor online from start of construction to connection to the grid. Though there is certainly a hope that some smaller reactors might get from construction to grid connection quicker, time will tell, and we’ll have to see whether the U.S. engineering and construction companies involved in these projects are ready for that challenge.”
Have we figured out a solution to the safety problem? Is there still an issue of what to do with nuclear waste?
“ First, it’s important to know that over the last 60, 70 years of commercial nuclear energy in the us, our spent nuclear fuel has never harmed anyone. And while there’s ongoing work in the Department of Energy about where to store it long term, that fuel is currently safely stored at reactor sites right now.
“Reactors themselves have historically been extremely safe in the United States. Even the Three Mile Island accident, which is the worst in our history, killed no one.
“And we have real hopes that some of the passive safety features of this current generation of proposed and existing new construction will be even safer. But it requires strong regulation, and I hope to see that that continues.”
This interview was edited for clarity.
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Chris Bentley produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Catherine Welch. Grace Griffin produced it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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