The US Department of Energy (DOE) has conditionally committed up to $17.5bn in loan facilities to support the construction of 10 Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear reactors in the US. The financing package targets funding for long-lead equipment required for reactor construction with the aim of significantly shortening project timelines and strengthening the domestic nuclear supply chain.
Westinghouse is jointly owned by Brookfield and its institutional partners, which hold a 51% stake, and Cameco, which owns the remaining 49%. According to Brookfield, the funding could accelerate construction and commercial operation schedules by as much as three years, with a goal of having 10 reactors under construction by 2030.
DOE’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing (EDF – formerly known as the Loan Programs Office) is expected to provide five separate loans, each supporting two reactors. Rather than financing completed projects, the funding is intended to help utilities and energy companies secure critical equipment early in the development process. Long-lead components are often among the biggest bottlenecks in nuclear construction because manufacturing and delivery can take several years.
Brookfield said the financing would provide project developers with greater certainty while supporting efforts to expand domestic manufacturing capacity for nuclear equipment. “Westinghouse continues to be at the forefront of major public and private partnerships that will materially accelerate the build-out of large-scale nuclear power generation, help meet growing energy demand, and support energy security in the US,” said Connor Teskey, Brookfield Asset Management CEO.
The funding package remains conditional. Before any money is disbursed, Westinghouse, project partners, and potential reactor owners must satisfy technical, legal, environmental, and financial requirements set by DOE.
US Energy Secretary Chris Wright told reporters the loans will help the US achieve its goal of having 10 new large-scale nuclear reactors under construction by 2030, potentially accelerating that timeline by three years. The US industry has struggled to attract investment because nuclear projects are capital‑intensive, prone to cost overruns and subject to complex regulations, making them riskier than cheaper, quicker alternatives such as natural gas and renewables.
The DOE loans advance President Trump‘s May 2025 Executive Order 14302, Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base, by supporting the objective of having 10 new large nuclear reactors with complete designs under construction by 2030, the department said.
This comes months after the DOE announced an $80bn agreement with Westinghouse Electric’s owners, Canada-based Cameco and Brookfield Asset Management, in which the government would arrange financing and help secure permits for the Westinghouse reactors in exchange for a 20% share of future profits.
“We are pleased to see the US government make this additional commitment to expanding nuclear power capacity using the proven AP1000 reactor technology,” said Cameco CEO Tim Gitzel. “When combined with the 23 May 2025 Executive Orders and other US government initiatives, we believe the right incentives are being created to advance the rapid deployment of AP1000 reactors in the US. The expansion of nuclear power in the United States is expected to create significant opportunities for Westinghouse and Cameco, accelerating growth in Westinghouse’s energy systems segment during the procurement and subsequent construction phase.”
Westinghouse will partner with up to five utilities and energy companies nationwide that will procure the reactors and other “long-lead” supply chain needs at a fixed price. Each project will be jointly owned by Westinghouse and a utility or energy company, each required to commit $500m before accessing DOE funds, creating a $1bn baseline cushion per site. Components will be purchased at fixed prices via bulk order structures to shield the developments from the massive cost overruns that historically plagued older US nuclear projects.
DOE structured the $17.5bn loan to back just five dual-reactor sites. While Westinghouse has finalised Letters of Intent with seven potential utility partners to compete for these five slots, site deployment targets focus heavily on existing nuclear footprints and major industrial clean-energy hubs:
- The Southeast Industrial Cluster: This region centres heavily around expanding existing commercial sites. Georgia Power’s Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, where the first commercial US AP1000 units (Vogtle 3&4) are already operating, serves as the execution blueprint for subsequent utility expansions.
- The Midwest Data Centre Corridors: Utilities across states such as Illinois and Ohio are evaluating co-located AP1000 deployments specifically paired with high-voltage lines powering Big Tech AI data centre hyperscalers.
- Regulated Utility Footprints: The remaining candidate utilities operate within regulated markets where long-term capital investments can be effectively balanced alongside clean energy transition goals.
The final five project footprints will be locked in once the utilities secure local regulatory matching approvals and finalise the upfront $500m equity contribution per site.
The AP1000 does not have a good track record. While it is marketed as an advanced, simplified design, its deployment in the has been plagued by massive financial failures, multi-year delays, and corporate bankruptcy.
Construction on two AP1000 reactors at the Virgil C Summer Nuclear Station was abandoned in 2017 after billions of dollars were spent. The project was crippled by design delays, faulty module manufacturing, and poor oversight, leaving ratepayers with billions in debt for a plant that was never finished.
While Vogtle Units 3&4 are finally online, they were completed seven years behind schedule with costs rocketing from an estimate of $14bn to over $30bn, making it one of the most expensive energy projects in US history. The compounding financial bleeding from the VC Summer and Vogtle projects forced Westinghouse Electric Company to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2017, which ultimately led to its acquisition by Brookfield and Cameco.
In contrast to the West, China successfully built and launched four AP1000 units (two each at Sanmen and Haiyang) despite delays of 3-5 years due to design changes, supply chain bottlenecks, and first-of-a-kind engineering flaws, particularly involving the reactor’s cooling pumps.
These projects were only completed because Chinese companies took over the construction. The Sanmen and Haiyang projects may have faced the same fate as VC Summer if China had not wrestled control of the project management away from Westinghouse. When the early delays began piling up, Chinese state-owned enterprises took over, adapted the construction methodology, and fundamentally changed how the reactors were built.
Westinghouse’s original plan relied on prefabricated modules shipped to the site. When those modules arrived with structural defects, State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation (SNPTC) took over fabrication locally to enforce strict quality control. China used the original four builds as a massive technology transfer exercise. Chinese engineers absorbed the AP1000 blueprints, localised the supply chain, and fixed the design flaws on their own factory floors.
Once Chinese firms mastered the construction, they upscaled the design into their own domestic version, the CAP1400 (Guohe One). They are now building these entirely independent of Westinghouse oversight
The United States does not have China’s state-directed industrial capacity, standardised labour force, or rapid supply chain control. If Western utilities encounter the same engineering bottlenecks that hit Sanmen or Vogtle, they cannot rely on a centralised state apparatus to step in. DOE is therefore trying to use fixed-price bulk orders as an artificial safety net.
The federal government and utility regulators have fundamentally overhauled the contractual structures for this 10-reactor target. Because the previous cost overruns at Vogtle and VC Summer were borne almost entirely by the public, the financial penalties and risk allocation mechanisms for the new American Nuclear Supply Chain Loans program have been designed to target the private partners aggressively.
The sharpest penalty built into the DOE EDF framework is the automatic look-back and equity clawback provision. Westinghouse and its utility partners must each deposit the $500m in cash equity per project into a federal escrow account before any loan money is distributed. If a project is abandoned or falls into severe regulatory default during the procurement phase, the $1bn in private equity is completely liquidated and forfeited to the US Treasury to offset the federal loan balance.
Unlike the earlier open-ended “cost-plus” contracts where Westinghouse billed utilities for their own mistakes, the new bulk ordering system relies on Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) Fixed-Price Contracts. Westinghouse is legally bound to deliver the long-lead components (such as the reactor pressure vessels and cooling pumps) at the exact price agreed upon in the bulk order. Any manufacturing errors, defects, or supply chain inflation costs must be absorbed entirely by Westinghouse and its parent companies. They can no longer pass component cost increases onto the utilities or the federal loan facility.
Because these reactors are being considered by data centre hyperscalers who require strict grid connection dates, delay penalties are tied directly to time milestones. The standardised contracts include per-diem liquidated damages that Westinghouse must pay to the utility partner for every day a major component delivery misses its critical-path schedule milestone. If manufacturing delays from third-party global suppliers push the project past its scheduled timeline, Westinghouse faces severe margin compression and cash penalties, which directly reduces the returns of its corporate owners.
At the state level, Public Service Commissions (PSCs – the regulators who approve utility electric rates – are refusing to sign off on open-ended approvals. State regulators are imposing strict prudency cost-caps before utilities can participate in the EDF programme. If a utility manages its local site construction poorly and exceeds its approved budget, the regulator will declare those expenditures “imprudent”. The utility is then legally barred from raising consumer electricity rates to recover those losses, forcing the utility’s private shareholders to take a direct financial write-down.
It remains to be seen how many of the 10 AP1000 reactors will be constructed in the coming decade, given the history and stringent conditions and penalties attached to the DOE loan.
