Nuclear Notes is produced by the Breakthrough Institute, and covers the policy, regulation, technology, and business of advanced nuclear energy in the United States and beyond.
Every Thursday, we track what’s really going on in the field: the new rules moving through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the advanced reactors moving from design to deployment, the companies going public and the utilities merging, and the executive orders and acts of Congress reshaping how the country builds. We explain not just what happened, but why it matters and how the pieces fit together.
Comment on Reforms: Out with the New, In with the Old
Surveys and recent votes in Congress show strong bipartisan support for nuclear energy, but that does not mean that all Democrats are completely behind recent reforms. Eleven state attorneys general, all Democrats, have signed on to comments opposing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s proposed reform of its radiation protection framework and its effort to fast-track procedures under the National Environmental Policy Act.
The Attorneys General are from states with mixed approaches to nuclear energy. California still has a moratorium in place on new nuclear, and has tried in the past to close its last remaining plant, Diablo Canyon. In contrast, Illinois, also a signatory, recently lifted a ban on new nuclear, and Colorado last year passed a law defining nuclear energy as a clean, non-emitting resource under state law, which could qualify a reactor for financial help. New Mexico, another signer, has a more mixed position. It has a large uranium enrichment plant, but recently blocked centralized interim storage of spent fuel.
Washington has considerable anti-nuclear sentiment, but X-energy and Energy Northwest, a public power agency, are working to develop a cluster of high-temperature small modular reactors in the eastern portion of the state. Likewise, Minnesota has had a strong anti-nuclear faction, but the state is funding a study to see if it should lift its 32-year moratorium on new reactors. The state is struggling to reach its goal of a carbon-free electricity system.
Maryland intermittently toys with the idea of another reactor at the Calvert Cliffs site. Massachusetts, another signer, was highly unfriendly to Seabrook, which is just across the state line in New Hampshire. And Vermont tried to outlaw the Vermont Yankee reactor. Both states are now cautiously reevaluating nuclear energy as part of their future power mix.
But perhaps more significant than the fact that all the attorneys general were Democrats, all were elected. Attorneys general taking a policy position like this can point to it in their next election campaign and win a few votes from people who oppose nuclear energy, and who are radiophobic. The NRC is proposing to eliminate its standard for holding radiation exposures “As Low As Reasonably Achievable,” a policy known by its initials, ALARA. The Attorney General of New Mexico, Raúl Torrez, called this “one of the most important science-based safeguards we have to minimize radiation risks,” although the standard isn’t based on science, since the doses it prevents are too small to have measurable effects, if in fact they have any.
ALARA is based on the idea that there is no threshold below which radiation has no health effect. But as the Breakthrough Institute has previously observed, real life is full of thresholds. For example, heated water from a tap has no effect on skin unless it reaches a certain temperature threshold. And imposing regulations on nuclear energy that are pointless and burdensome does have a health effect; it biases the electricity system in favor of dirtier but less-regulated fuels.
The dose saved by enforcing ALARA is tiny relative to total background dose or to the variation in dose absorbed by people depending on life choices that we don’t think of in radiation terms, like taking a lot of long-distance airline flights, which exposes a person to more radiation from space, or moving from sea level to a place like Denver, where natural background radiation is higher.
The attorneys general comment objects to changes in implementing NEPA’s notoriously cumbersome requirements for Environmental Impact Statements. They also object to “categorical exclusions,” which would exempt highly similar projects from fully individual evaluations.
But as the Breakthrough Institute points out, “If the U.S. environmental regulatory regime is to function as an effective tool for safeguarding the environment, policymakers and stakeholders alike must work to engineer a new process that supports–rather than hinders–the nation’s transition to a future of cleaner and more abundant energy and resources.”
The comments implicitly carry the idea that reforming the rules means increasing nuclear risk. In fact, the changes pave the way for a generation of nuclear technology that is inherently safer, by its use of refined designs and better materials. Among the points in the attorneys general comments that are counterintuitive is that old rules are better because they are old.
Reactor Operators Map Fresh Investments in Legacy Plants
The companies that run legacy nuclear reactors are bullish on the industry’s future, according to a survey by the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s largest trade organization. Those companies want to extend their licenses, boost power production at each plant, run the plants longer between refueling shutdowns, and in some cases restart shuttered reactors.
Overall, the survey said that there would be over 7,000 megawatts of additional generation from the current fleet.
But there is a bottleneck for all this activity, the organization said. “The ability of federal agencies to sustain predictable schedules, efficient reviews, and timely decision-making will play a major role in determining how much of the planned nuclear capacity identified in this survey ultimately becomes operational.”
NEI also asked the companies whether their plans and expectations for new nuclear had expanded in the last year. Seven said yes and four said no. None said their plans or expectations had decreased.
Looking ahead 15 years, the survey showed utilities are planning for another 33.6 gigawatts of new nuclear generation, which is nearly double what was planned in 2024. Plans were split evenly between small modular reactors and large reactors.
The survey’s insights are limited by the fact that NEI was only asking its members. This survey specifically targeted 21 NEI utility member companies that operate the United States’ 94 nuclear units. Companies developing data centers have also announced plans to include reactors in their projects, but those plans are not included in the survey. NEI found that its members’ interest in “behind-the-meter” reactors at data centers “appears to have waned.”
Projects like X-energy’s high-temperature gas-cooled reactor at a Dow Chemical factory in Texas are another area of nuclear expansion that the survey may not capture. And, of course, when discussing power plants, more projects are planned than actually built.
The utilities’ planned projects for new builds run to a little over 30 gigawatts by 2039, which is a far cry from the 400 gigawatts of capacity that President Trump has called for by 2050. Current capacity is a little under 100 gigawatts.
And the survey found that NEI’s members are not so interested in hydrogen, which can be made by nuclear reactors without releasing carbon dioxide and can be used to generate electricity or industrial heat for things like chemical processing.
U.S. Loans up to $1.9 Billion for Restart of Duane Arnold
The Energy Department announced it had closed a loan with NextEra Energy to help the company restart the 615-megawatt reactor, which closed in 2020 because of adverse economics. Reopening is scheduled for Spring 2029, and Google has contracted to buy some of the energy for its data centers.
Palisades, in Michigan, and the Crane Clean Energy Center (formerly Three Mile Island 1) in Pennsylvania are also being restarted with help from federal loans.
A Different Kind of Coal-to-Nuclear Conversion
West Virginia has entered the competition to host a Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus, a place where uranium could be enriched, spent nuclear fuel could be reprocessed, new fuel could be manufactured, and waste could be stored or disposed of.
The state is better known as the coal capital of America, but that industry is in severe decline; the mines still operating are so heavily mechanized that there are far fewer jobs. It has no nuclear energy plants, and missed the April 1 deadline to apply for the competition for the campuses, but lobbied to be added. Five other states are in the competition, and it is not clear how many campuses would be built.
Sail from Charleston, S.C., to Felixstowe, U.K., on Neutrons?
Many of the hurdles facing nuclear-powered freighters are not technical, but regulatory. Among the issues, ports at both ends of the journey have to agree to accept the ships.
But two major ports, on either side of the Atlantic, have announced a partnership to study the legal and operational issues, including security, cyber resilience, and emergency response. And Felixstowe is the U.K.’s biggest container port.
Marine diesel engines run continuously for long periods and produce many megawatts of power, making them promising places to substitute nuclear fuel for fossil fuel.
Thorium Goes Small
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Ampera, a Florida-based startup, will explore using thorium instead of uranium in TRISO fuel, which could turn high-temperature gas reactors and microreactors into machines that make much of their own fuel.
Thorium-232 is an abundant element. It cannot sustain a chain reaction, but it can capture a neutron and eventually decay into uranium-233, which can. Previous use has involved taking the fuel out of a light-water reactor, chopping it up, and recovering the uranium for reuse, but some companies are exploring breeding the U-233 in the fuel itself.
TRISO, or tri-structural isotropic fuel, is usually made with kernels of uranium encased in concentric layers of highly heat-resistant materials. The fuel is well-suited to microreactors and to high-temperature reactors.
Part of the challenge is producing a thorium kernel with a precise size, shape, and composition. LLNL says it has developed a technology that can do that.
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Per usual, NN breaks through the noise of politics and hits the target "in fact, the changes pave the way for a generation of nuclear technology that is inherently safer, by its use of refined designs and better materials. Among the points in the attorneys general comments that are counterintuitive is that old rules are better because they are old."