President Donald Trump signed executive orders boosting the nuclear industry.
Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said ahead of Trump’s signing of the orders, “This is a huge day for the nuclear industry.”
“This is going to turn the clock back on over 50 years of overregulation of an industry,” he said. “American greatness has always come from innovation, and we are very innovative. We led post-World War II with all things nuclear, but then we’ve been stagnated, we’ve choked it with overregulation.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated, “Energy security is national security,” adding, “We’re including artificial intelligence in everything we do. If we don’t, we’re not fast enough. We’re not keeping up with adversaries. You need the energy to fuel it. Nuclear is a huge part of that.”
One executive order aims to “speed up the approval and adoption process for specialized nuclear reactors,” a White House official said. “It also creates a special envoy position and a strategy around nuclear technology export, the idea being that we can grow American industry on the back of foreign purchasers who are interested in this sort of technology as well.”
Another order reforms the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to reduce the regulatory processes that have held the industry back. A separate order reduces overregulation for nuclear reactor testing.
The final order seeks to spur a “closer collaboration with private industry to ensure that we have the fuel supplies we need for a modernized nuclear energy sector,” the official explained. It also discusses the creation of a “nuclear energy sector workforce.”
Energy Secretary Christ Wright said that with Trump’s orders, “we will see reactor restarts, new construction, and a pipeline of skilled workers ready to build and operate next-gen reactors!”
