The Trump Department of Energy is preparing to finance up to 10 nuclear power plants in an effort to usher in a nuclear energy “renaissance,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in an exclusive interview with the Washington Free Beacon. [emphasis, links added]
The agency will use its rebranded Office of Energy Dominance Financing to provide low-interest loans for the reactors, Wright said.
The financing is designed to provide a “nudge” to an industry that has struggled for decades to get new projects up and running.
Wright’s comments came as he toured the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), a government facility that focuses on cutting-edge nuclear energy research, on Monday.
“We want things built by and risk capital coming from the private marketplace, and most everything we’re doing is dominantly going to be funded by private capital,” Wright told the Free Beacon. “But the government smothered the nuclear industry for 40-plus years. We’ve got to get it back up on its feet again.”
“We are going to use our loan program office at the Department of Energy for credit-worthy hyperscalers that are putting equity capital in front of us,” he continued. “We’re going to back that up with low-interest loans. We’ll supply it to maybe the first 10 reactors that get built. That’ll incentivize people to move fast.”
The Energy Department’s intent to finance new nuclear projects is an extraordinary signal that the Trump administration is serious about deploying a new wave of nuclear reactors.
President Donald Trump has identified nuclear as a strategic sector for shoring up both energy and national security. In May, he set a lofty goal of quadrupling the nation’s nuclear capacity over the next decade.
Wright’s comments come a month after the Department of Energy closed on a $1 billion loan for a project to partially restart the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant.
I was at Idaho National Laboratory today, completing my goal of visiting all 17 @ENERGY National Laboratories.
American nuclear energy innovation began @INL, and today, President Trump is ensuring that our advancement of nuclear technologies is not just continuing, but surging! pic.twitter.com/TnFPQ7wyR3
— Secretary Chris Wright (@SecretaryWright) December 9, 2025
That loan, though, will help bring a decades-old plant back online. The future financing Wright teased on Monday will support new projects and new technology.
It could help finance the development of small modular reactors. Traditional reactors typically produce around one gigawatt of electricity—enough to power about a million homes—but are stationary, costly, and must be custom-built for their location.
Modular reactors are small enough to be transported, can be assembled in a factory, and will still be able to generate as much as 300 megawatts of electricity, enough to power roughly 300,000 homes.
There are only two operational small modular reactors in the world—one in China and one in Russia.
“Maybe the only way to get these projects done is through the loan program,” Rep. Mike Simpson (R., Idaho), who serves on the House Appropriations energy subcommittee and toured the INL alongside Wright, told the Free Beacon. “Because how are you going to find investors that are going to invest long term? These are long-term investments.”
Top photo shows Sec. Wright touring the Materials and Fuels Complex at the INL. X/Idaho National Lab
Read rest at Free Beacon
One of the problems with restarting our nuclear energy program is the law suits filed by some environmentalists. This needs to be controlled or implementing nuclear energy will not only be delayed, it will be more expensive. One approach is when a law suit against nuclear energy is lost, force the lawyers and everyone else backing the law suit to pay for the cost of the delay.
As of today, there is only 75 megawatts of new nuclear power construction expected to be complete before 2030. As of 2024 and 2025, the U.S. nuclear fleet has a total net generating capacity of 97,000 MW, produced by 94 commercial reactors. 75 is only 0.08% of 97,000.
New construction has practically stalled in the nuclear industry.
The Department of Energy (DOE) has allocated $900 million in direct funding to accelerate the deployment and construction of new Generation III+ small modular reactors (SMRs). This is just a plain and wishful thinking so far.
Why had nuclear stalled in the US Richard? Think hard about it. I’ll give you a clue–fearmongering after a partial meltdown at Three Mile Island. Since that accident there has not been any other accidents in the US that resulted in the useability of a reactor. There have been two other major accidents, first one at Chernobyl which was caused by a combination of a faulty Soviet design and poorly trained operators. The second at Fukushima, Japan, which was caused not by the tsunami but by having the diesel backup systems to keep the pumps running were sited below ground and were flooded because of the tsunami. Without that there would have been damage that needed to be cleaned up but no meltdown by the reactors.
One of the bigger issues in getting new nuclear plants built is the incredible amount of government regulations necessary to even start construction of a plant which has made any company wanting to build a plant shy away from it. Hopefully the new Small Modular Reactors will help in reducing this by getting approval from the NRC once for making large numbers of identical reactors that can be deployed across the country. Unlike you I actually have experience in operating a nuclear reactor and in the 70 years that the Navy has operated hundreds of reactors there has not been one nuclear accident. And most of the operators on the commercial nuclear plants come from the Navy’s nuclear fleet.
I merely reported on the lack of new nuclear construction.
The obvious reason is that investors don’t believe they can make a profit. I don’t consider this good news, but it is reality.
Take a Hike Anti-Nuclear screwballs now march back to your homes in your Sandals and prepare for Winter
I’m thrilled to see the administration pushing nuclear power. Two comments though regarding the large plants of the past and the newer modular plants. First there’s no reason that there cannot be standardized large plants. They should look at the Navy’s nuclear programs where they standardized the nuclear plants. I was a Reactor Operator in the Navy serving on two different subs. The plants in the one that was constructed in 1958 was the same plant in the much newer sub built in 1975. As they came out with newer subs that were larger the power plants were upgraded with larger reactors but the overall plants were still very similar.
The second was the statement about siting the plants causing the reactor plants to be different. There would be some different requirements for the siting based on how the plant is cooled and issues with the land it is constructed on. But the modular plants are no different in that aspect. They need cooling just like their larger cousins. And they are going to be sited somewhere with the same issues. But the plus of these modular nukes could be that they will be easier to build once the design is completed and approved by the US NRC.