Resilient forms of energy are critical for meeting the growing power demands spurring the rapid growth of technologies like AI. On May 23, U.S. President Trump took another important step to address this challenge by signing a series of executive orders to usher in a “nuclear renaissance” within the U.S. Notably, these latest policy actions aim to boost domestic nuclear energy production and accelerate deployment of the advanced nuclear reactors that will power the future of U.S. technological leadership.
While these executive orders are necessary to scale up domestic nuclear energy production, success will ultimately require aligning these actions with additional reforms that address key implementation challenges. Ensuring that supporting infrastructure, including the electric grid and data centers, are well-positioned to benefit from the orders’ ambitious deployment timelines must be a strategic imperative for the Trump Administration’s energy and AI leadership goals to be realized.
Here are a few key considerations for policymakers as they look to advance U.S. energy priorities:
The Executive Orders Provide a Strong Strategic Vision, but Hinge on Successful Implementation
The administration's nuclear executive orders are essential for meeting growing electric power demands, but policymakers must address the fundamental mismatch between urgent energy needs and nuclear development timelines, which typically span years, not months. Speeding up these timelines, however, requires more than simply cutting red tape. Delivering reliable, baseload power to the electric grid from this nuclear revival requires capital intensive, multi-decade investments in large-scale energy generation projects that the private sector alone cannot support at scale.
In his remarks to the U.S. Senate Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcommittee in May, U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright that one of the most effective tools at the federal government’s disposal for supporting the growth of emerging technologies is the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO). While the administration’s executive orders underscore the importance of the LPO in bringing nuclear projects quickly online, efforts to from the LPO undercut the President’s nuclear energy ambitions before these projects even break ground. Ensuring that the LPO remains appropriately resourced is critical for delivering on the Administration’s goal of building a dominant U.S. energy sector that will lower the cost of electricity and foster growth in advanced manufacturing to help restore the U.S. industrial base.
Grid Modernization Must Keep Pace
Deploying nuclear energy alone is not enough to power the growth in AI data centers and maintain U.S. AI leadership. Policymakers must move with the same urgency to update the electric grid and infrastructure so that all large generation sources, including nuclear power plants, can safely and quickly connect to a resilient and modernized grid. At the same time, the aging U.S. electric grid is currently not equipped to handle the surge in demand caused by AI’s computationally intensive workloads, and data centers are facing severe grid interconnection delays. In Northern Virginia, the largest data center market in the world, the wait time in the interconnection queue can be as long as seven years. Changes to federal and state policies to solve transmission siting and planning challenges and optimize interconnection processes should be made in parallel to scaling up domestic nuclear energy deployment, so that more long-distance transmission can be built to enable new nuclear capacity to effectively serve data centers.
Regulatory Streamlining Must Deliver Real Results
The actions’ new licensing deadlines and streamlined permitting procedures for nuclear reactors are a significant improvement in reducing barriers to nuclear energy deployment in the U.S. Nevertheless, it is strategically important that the streamlined licensing processes for new reactors uphold rigorous safety standards to maintain the public’s trust in nuclear energy. Benefitting from this nuclear renaissance means that accompanying reforms that speed up the construction of supporting infrastructure—such as data centers—are just as critical for sustaining the momentum.
The release of the White House Council on Environmental Quality’s recognizes the importance of a modern digital ecosystem in driving efficiency in environmental and other permitting review processes. Federal agencies are often bogged down in labor-intensive, manual review processes that slow down project timelines and create interagency redundancies. While the plan encourages agencies to leverage innovative commercial technology solutions to drive change, long-term success will require fundamental changes that enable more strategic technology acquisition and implementation at the agency level.
Workforce Development is Mission-Critical
The ambitious timeline outlined by the recent actions demands a skilled workforce that doesn’t currently exist at scale. The energy workforce, including but not limited to nuclear specialists, must grow significantly in the coming years to meet these demands and offset the of a large chunk of the nuclear energy workforce within the next decade.
While the administration’s focus on expanding the domestic nuclear energy workforce is a promising start, a sustainable pipeline of specialized talent that can design, build, operate, and maintain not only nuclear power plants but also supporting infrastructure, including data centers and the electric grid, will be necessary to deliver on U.S. ambitions for global energy dominance.
Such projects will require greater access to skilled personnel like electricians, plumbers, welders, and construction workers to avoid project delays and cost overruns. To accomplish that requires immediate, coordinated training programs between government, industry, and educational institutions, or workforce will quickly become the limiting factor.
President Trump’s “nuclear renaissance” is a promising step for delivering on his goal of restoring U.S. energy dominance and maintaining America’s position as the leader in AI. With the global race for tech leadership intensifying, fueling the next generation of innovation means U.S. policymakers must match the ability to generate reliable sources of energy with the ability to deploy them effectively. We look forward to continuing our work with the Trump Administration and Congress to build the energy infrastructure that will power the future of American ingenuity and innovation.