The Trump administration has indicated a willingness to promote domestic nuclear energy production, though several industry experts say there are a number of obstacles that must be cleared first.
Immediately after returning to the White House, President Donald Trump signed an executive order on “unleashing American energy,” aiming to bolster domestic fossil fuel production, which the U.S. primarily relies on, and cut “undue burdens” on the nuclear energy sector. While the move signaled increased attention on the industry’s development, several policy experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation that many obstacles must be addressed before nuclear power can become a major source of energy in the U.S.
“In this country, we’ve made it so difficult that it’s almost impossible to build a nuclear power plant,” JD Foster, former chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget who would routinely sit in on meetings regarding nuclear regulatory policy, told the DCNF. “The Nuclear Regulatory Agency is one of the slowest moving entities in the universe when it comes to assessing new technologies and nuclear power.”
Foster and others in the nuclear energy arena pointed to several hurdles for the industry, including a long and stringent permitting process, a measly specialized workforce, nuclear waste management, federal regulations and public fears surrounding radiation.
Although former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama pursued an expansion of nuclear technology for its effective and reliable energy output, the U.S. still remains primarily reliant on fossil fuels. Biden, for example, signed the bipartisan ADVANCE Act into law in June 2024, which was designed to bring down the costs of nuclear licensing, create new opportunities for old industrial sites to host reactors and allocate additional resources to the NRC. Despite this, nearly all nuclear power currently produced in the U.S. comes from reactors built between 1967 and 1990, according to the World Nuclear Association.
