There 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.
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 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 ultimately receiving the bespoke policy support it needs to expand.
Which bring us to the new Trump administration. One of Trump’s first acts was to announce that the USA was withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. In February, freshly appointed Secretary of Energy Chris Wright set out initial executive actions which were intended to unleash a “Golden Era of American energy dominance”. These imposing words took square aim at existing net-zero policies and announced the intention to grow US energy production to meet future expected demand growth.
Nuclear power is to be ‘unleashed’ in the country. The emphasis, however, is squarely on commercialising the next generation of reactor technologies rather than deploying the many excellent technologies the US already has. This approach may well result in very little additional nuclear energy capacity being installed in the near-term.
As for fossil fuels, these outline measures are far more immediate and include easing restrictions on LNG exports and refilling the strategic petroleum reserve. In another recent development, the Environmental Protection Agency is now looking at rolling back regulations which curbed various power plant emissions. The EPA is also terminating some US$20bn-worth of grants that had been allocated to clean energy projects under the Biden administration.
The changes are of course still coming and the overall impact is unknowable. The US nuclear industry needs to calculate carefully whether, despite the nuclear-positive rhetoric, any new measures the Trump administration introduces to support nuclear energy will be eclipsed in both the scale and immediacy of measures that will enhance fossil fuels. Given the emphasis on market-led and commercial approaches, and of course the traditionally long timescale of nuclear project development, the net result may not be particularly favourable for the US nuclear sector.
There are many nuclear advocates and entrepreneurs who place the failure of new nuclear to compete commercially in the USA squarely on excessive regulation. These advocates have harsh words for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Start-up SMR company Last Energy has gone as far as to sue the NRC for how it has interpreted its own rules on reactor licensing, for example.
In response to what some perceive as excessive regulation, some nuclear leaders have publicly supported the controversial Trump-appointed Elon Musk led Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Valar Atomics CEO Isaiah Taylor, for instance, described DOGE (again on X) as “the best chance we’ve had at reindustrializing in 50 years”.
Others have suggested that DOGE really has no clue how to remove excessive regulation, and that it may in fact be firing the very people with that skill. There is a genuine, necessary and nuanced debate to be had over nuclear regulations and how to effectively streamline these, but DOGE is seemingly armed with a hammer and a mission statement, rather than a scalpel and a patient, questioning attitude.
As a result of DOGE, some US government bodies – including nuclear ones – are now under-staffed and/or running scared because of the successive waves sackings. Many government employees simply do not want to bring attention to themselves at this time. The US government apparatus seems temporarily frozen. The whole US nuclear industry is likely feeling this same paralysis at the moment.
Something else that is obviously frozen is US foreign aid. The 90-day freeze has thrown international programmes into absolute turmoil, and energy has not escaped. Bloomberg reports that the new Trump administration has dismantled the Power Africa initiative. A surprising move given that it would seem to run contrary to the idea of unleashing US energy dominance.
Trump foreign policy is currently bewildering to most people. It seems to encompass traditional friends as well as foes with the same transactional mindset. Trump’s comments towards Canada and the threatened implementation of tariffs has also had impacts. The resulting 10% tariff on uranium will probably not interfere significantly with that trade, but questions are still circulating over US-technologies slated to be built in the country, and whether projects will go ahead as previously planned.
Across the ocean and allies are eyeing the USA warily. Existing international treaties are teetering. The infamous Trump-Zelenski interview has caused European leaders to question NATO and whether they can depend on US military support. This is not being helped by Trump suggesting that the US should own certain European infrastructure like the Ukrainian nuclear plants or critical mineral resources.
As a direct consequence of these events and statements, the Polish prime minister Donald Tusk has stated that Poland must now look at acquiring nuclear weapons. This creates a somewhat uncomfortable situation given that Westinghouse has recently been awarded a nuclear project there. The non-proliferation regime rests on countries giving up the right to acquire nuclear weapons in exchange for the import of civil nuclear energy technology. Where does that all stand now? If Poland gets an exception, will other countries get one too?
Less than a week after Tusk’s comments and Trump criticised existing US defence arrangements in Japan. It is unclear how seriously Japan’s leaders took this, but if they can no longer depend on a US security shield then the likely response seems obvious. It is unclear what civil nuclear trade and cooperation will even look like in a world where countries are once again building nuclear weapons in order to protect themselves
A new day will no doubt bring new Trumpian feats and with them fresh controversies that are all but certain to upset the established order. We all need to keep watching the juggernaut and hold on.
