The Trump Department of Energy will issue $17.5 billion in loans to help fund 10 new nuclear power reactors nationwide, administration officials said Tuesday. [some emphasis, links added]
The loans, provided by the agency’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing—the Trump administration’s renamed Energy Department loan program—will back the construction of reactors manufactured by the American nuclear power firm Westinghouse.
According to the Energy Department, seven utility companies have entered into letters of intent with Westinghouse; the agency will select just five that will ultimately receive funding to construct two reactors each.
“We want to get things moving again,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright told reporters. “We are doing everything we can at the Department of Energy to add dispatchable, reliable, secure energy to the United States, to lower electricity prices and power a reindustrialization of our country.”
In December, the Washington Free Beacon first reported that the Department of Energy would finance 10 reactors.
Wright told the Free Beacon at the time that the move would provide a “nudge” to an industry that has struggled for decades to get new projects up and running.
The action is a remarkable vote of confidence for an industry that has struggled to develop new projects in recent decades, due in part to longstanding public superstition and safety concerns going back to the 1980s.
And it signals that the Trump administration is confident that nuclear power is a viable source for meeting the rapidly increasing energy demands in the United States from artificial intelligence, data centers, and manufacturing.
The Energy Department loans will fund a single type of reactor, Westinghouse’s AP1000 units. Each of the 10 reactors will generate 1.1 gigawatts of power, enough to power roughly a million homes, and Tuesday’s announcement will kickstart projects that could power 10 million homes altogether.
While the timing of the projects remains undetermined, the announcement is part of President Donald Trump’s goal to begin construction of 10 new nuclear reactors by 2030.
Read rest at Free Beacon
