Trump signs executive orders to spur US ‘nuclear energy renaissance’

Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders on Friday intended to spur a “nuclear energy renaissance” through the construction of new reactors he said would satisfy the electricity demands of data centers for artificial intelligence and other emerging industries.

The orders represented the president’s latest foray into the policy underlying America’s electricity supply. Trump declared a national energy emergency on his first day in office over and moved to undo a ban implemented by Joe Biden on new natural gas export terminals and expand oil and gas drilling in Alaska.

Nuclear does not carry oil and gas’s carbon emissions, but produces radioactive waste that the United States lacks a facility to permanently store. Some environmental groups have safety concerns over the reactors and their supply chain.

Trump signed four orders intended to speed up the approval of nuclear reactors for defense and AI purposes, reform the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with the goal of quadrupling production of electricity over the next 25 years, revamp the regulatory process to have three experimental reactors operating by 4 July 2026 and boost investment in the technology’s industrial base.

“Mark this day on your calendar. This is going to turn the clock back on over 50 years of overregulation of an industry,” the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, said at an Oval Office event where Trump signed the orders.

“President Trump here today has committed to energy dominance, and part of that energy dominance is that we’ve got enough electricity to win the AI arms race with China.”

High-profile accidents at nuclear plants in the United States and abroad stirred public opposition to nuclear energy in decades past, but Trump described the technology as “very safe”.

However, the effort of the “department of government efficiency” to downsize the federal workforce has created snafus like the temporary firings of some employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the US nuclear arsenal. It is also feared to hamper a long-running nuclear waste cleanup operation in Washington state.

In Congress, Trump’s Republican allies have moved to implement his energy policies and repeal Biden’s.

A sprawling tax-and-spending bill the House of Representatives passed this week changes the rules for tax incentives created under Biden for renewable energy power plants to make them available only for projects that begin construction within 60 days of the bill’s enactment, and are completed by 2028.

But nuclear plants only have to be under construction by 2028, a less strict guideline.