U.S. Nuclear Renaissance

As the Trump administration rolled out a cascade of purported breakthroughs that will revive nuclear power, its most audacious announcement came in October, when it unveiled a plan to build a fleet of massive legacy reactors — with Japan poised to foot much of the bill.

Under the terms shared by the Commerce Department, tens of billions of dollars promised to flow from Japan toward 10 new Westinghouse AP1000 reactors — each capable of powering a city the size of Denver.

American taxpayers were assured that, rather than presenting a big financial risk, the partnership would create a windfall for them, as the federal government was claiming an ownership stake in Westinghouse that could be cashed in for billions if the company goes public down the road.

Eight months after this partnership was unveiled, Japan has yet to commit money to a single large reactor. No utility has ordered an AP1000. The administration has declined to identify any customers for the reactors it says are coming, and industry executives involved in trying to make the projects happen say President Donald Trump’s plan to boost nuclear power is long on aspiration and light on binding agreements.

“Most of the people I know in the industry are working on the assumption that there is going to be no investment coming out of this deal with Japan,” said one senior industry official who is trying to push forward an AP1000 project. They spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for antagonizing the administration.

“Most of us have given up,” the official said. “The administration cannot answer basic questions around how this would work.”

Another industry veteran was more blunt about the Trump administration’s effort to use the threat of tariffs on Japan get it to pay for U.S. AP1000 reactors: “Japan is not going to open their checkbook just because the president says they should. They are not stupid.”

A spokesman for the Japanese government did not respond to questions from The Washington Post. Neither did Westinghouse.

Even as the administration tries to show rapid progress on meeting Trump’s goal of quadrupling U.S. nuclear electricity production by 2050 — unveiling novel finance deals, announcing research and development gains for nascent small-reactor designs, steering $17.5 billion in loan guarantees toward trying to stimulate the supply chain for the more conventional AP1000s — it is bedeviled by the same realities of economics and physics that have stymied the nation’s nuclear “renaissance” since George W. Bush announced one was underway more than two decades ago.

The only major new commercial reactors that have come online since that time are a pair of AP1000s in Georgia that were so much more expensive to build than expected, and were so far behind schedule, that the fallout paralyzed the nuclear industry. Other announced projects were abandoned as things went sideways, as in South Carolina, where billions of dollars of ratepayer money was spent before the plug was pulled on plans to build AP1000s.

The Trump administration, which made reviving nuclear power a pillar in its energy agenda, says things are different now. It points to its push to relax federal nuclear safety regulations, the incubation of commercially untested technologies by the Energy Department and its weaponization of tariffs to pressure allies to fund U.S. projects. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told reporters recently that hyperscalers — the tech companies building massive data centers to fuel the growth of artificial intelligence — are so hungry for power that they are eagerly lining up to invest in big nuclear projects.

“We’ve seen tremendous interest,” he said. “What’s different now is that hyperscalers need a quantum amount of power. That is different than really at any time in human history. It’s driving the demand growth for energy in the country, and we’re expecting that they will enter into long-term power purchase agreements for maybe as long as 25 years. That will be done at prices that will support the building of these units.”

The comments came as Wright announced $17.5 billion in federal loans that utilities seeking to build AP1000s could use to place orders for components with long lead times.

The administration framed the loans as game-changing. Industry officials interviewed by The Post described them as marginally helpful, with one calling them a “nonevent.” It was telling, they said, that none of the seven utilities that the administration says are interested would identify themselves. Utility executives still risk panicking their shareholders if they commit to a large nuclear project.

Tech companies are equally cautious. While they are willing to sign long-term contracts to buy nuclear power, even at elevated prices, they are just as averse as utilities are to taking ownership of plants, which could leave them strapped with billions of dollars in unplanned costs if things go poorly, as happened in Georgia and South Carolina.

“There have been a lot of press releases, but we are not making forward progress,” said Paul Tice, a senior fellow at the National Center for Energy Analytics. He added that it is crucial for the U.S. to revive its nuclear industry, as energy demand soars and China positions itself to overtake the U.S. in nuclear energy production. But he said: “The spin is not getting us to the order book we need. We’re not moving the needle at all.”

The sputtering of the Japan agreement — at least as far as AP1000 construction goes — is particularly frustrating for industry insiders, who say the U.S. government is going to need to step up with much bigger subsidies from its own taxpayers before foreign governments invest.

The Commerce Department declined to answer detailed questions about how the agreement with Japan and a similar partnership with South Korea are structured, whether any deals involving AP1000s are underway or what obligations either country has to invest any money.

“The Department of Commerce continues to progress the President’s agenda of promoting new Nuclear Power projects, including through the Japanese and Korean trade deals,” the department said in a statement. “With respect to Westinghouse, the Department is in discussions with all relevant parties.”

“The industry has never seen anything like this before,” said Kevin Kong, CEO of Everstar, a technology firm focused on using AI to more efficiently and safely build large reactors like the AP1000. “There is no formal process.”

Kong has been to Asia several times seeking to tap into the Japanese and South Korean investment the administration said would come. Companies there have told him and other U.S. nuclear executives that they will be investing only in viable projects with strong profit potential and will not be absorbing the risk that U.S. utilities and tech firms are refusing to take on.

The Post sought comment from the three industrial firms Japan identified in an October fact sheet as potential partners in constructing AP1000 reactors with up to $100 billion of Japanese government money. Two of the companies, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and IHI, did not respond. The third, Toshiba, wrote in an email: “At this time, Toshiba has not made any specific decisions regarding this matter and is unable to provide further comment at this stage.”

There is an obvious reason for the hesitance, said Peter Bradford, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and former chair of the commissions that regulate utilities in New York and Maine. “Nuclear power has never been able to compete economically in the competitive markets used in the U.S. for procuring electricity generation,” he said. “Nothing that has happened recently has given any sign of changing that. This is an industry that has lived on promises and prophecies and hype for a long time now. The burden is on them to do something more than just tell you they have some really good ideas for the next go-round.”

The Trump administration has gotten some traction on one nuclear deal with a Japanese firm, but it involves a smaller, untested reactor that has not been licensed or proven commercially viable. Japan has agreed to invest up to $40 billion to help deploy the 300-megawatt reactors, developed by GE Vernova and Hitachi, in Tennessee and Alabama. They would be manufactured elsewhere, assembled on-site and generate about one-third the power of conventional commercial reactors.

They are part of the push by the administration to bring new reactor designs to the market. That push also includes incubating new small-reactor designs at the Idaho National Laboratory, where four companies announced over the past month that their models have reached criticality, a milestone marking a sustained controlled chain reaction.

There is intense debate in the industry about the significance of this development, as none of the designs have been proven economically practical, and the reactors generally would produce just a fraction of the electricity provided by an AP1000.

The type of reactor Japan says it would help bankroll in Tennessee and Alabama, called the BWRX-300, currently comes with a massive price tag. The first is being built in Ontario. It will cost upward of $20 billion to build four 300-megawatt reactors — exponentially more than other power plants.

GE Vernova-Hitachi has said the costs will come down precipitously once the first reactors are built. But the nuclear industry has a long history of failing to accurately forecast expenses.

“There are a lot of big uncertain questions,” acknowledged Ted Nordhaus, co-founder of the pronuclear Breakthrough Institute, who nonetheless sees small reactors as the best option for bringing nuclear power online quickly.

The administration is approaching a pivotal question, industry officials say, as it struggles to turn its frenzy of nuclear power deregulation, diplomacy and scientific development into concrete projects that bring electricity onto the power grid: If utilities, investors and foreign partners won’t shoulder that risk, will the federal government?

“You have a need here for an even greater government involvement,” said Armond Cohen, executive director of Clean Air Task Force, a clean-energy advocacy group that supports nuclear power. “A utility could announce a $15 billion project to build the next unit, and it would not even be that price tag that would be the problem. It is the possibility that it will cost $17 billion and the shareholders would have to swallow the difference.”

Asking taxpayers to absorb that risk would come with a big political price.

“Nuclear has already been subsidized beyond anything given to wind or solar,” Bradford said. “There are combinations of renewable energy and storage and power-grid improvements that would be half the cost of what is projected for these new reactors. This is not a matter of shaving a bit off the price here or there. It is the fundamental cost structure.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/07/12/trump-says-nuclear-renaissance-is-coming-deals-arent/