What's Behind the Push to Revive Nuclear Power?

Editor's Note: This article appears in Governing's Spring 2025 magazine. You can subscribe here.

Two half-built nuclear reactors have sat unused in Fairfield County, S.C., for the last seven years, a monument to America’s previous rounds of nuclear ambition. The reactors at the Virgil C. Summer plant were meant to generate 2,200 megawatts of power, enough to electrify hundreds of thousands of South Carolina homes. Instead, after a scandal in which the developers withheld information about delays and cost overruns to cling to public backing for the project, the reactors are abandoned. Nine billion dollars was spent on their construction.

Several corporate executives have been jailed in connection with the effort. Thanks partly to a special financing plan approved by the South Carolina legislature, ratepayers are still paying off $2 billion in debt for the construction, despite never receiving any power from the facility.

Last fall, members of the South Carolina Governor’s Nuclear Advisory Council visited the site. They were expecting “a lost Aztec city,” with overgrown weeds and wild animals roaming, says Jim Little, a nuclear-industry veteran and member of the advisory council. What they found instead was a bit of rust on an otherwise pristine, albeit deserted, worksite. They reported back to their council and called for a report on the costs of restarting the project.

Two identical reactors are up and running in Georgia, a turn of events that could make it easier to attract investment to the Virgil C. Summer plant. “If you turn the problem upside down,” Little says, “it’s a real opportunity.” But it’s an opportunity that still faces obstacles based on cost, safety and long delays in construction. Much is under consideration; not much is being built yet.

Still, it’s a sign of the momentum behind nuclear energy in the U.S. that just a few years after one of South Carolina’s most embarrassing infrastructure failures — and just a few months after the last executive was sentenced to prison in connection with the project — credible voices are calling for the plant’s resurrection.
A range of factors have converged to reverse the fortunes of the domestic nuclear energy industry, which a decade ago appeared to be headed toward gradual obsolescence. Urgent concerns about global warming have cast nuclear energy, which doesn’t produce greenhouse gas emissions, in a different light. The demand for energy has skyrocketed with the rise of complex computing tasks like cryptocurrency mining and artificial intelligence, which in turn have sparked a building boom for data centers that use massive amounts of electricity.

Tech companies have shown a willingness to pay big money for reliable power. Nuclear technology has advanced as well, with much hype around the potential for small modular reactors (SMRs) to generate power in more locations at lower cost than traditional facilities. And strategic geopolitical considerations, including competing with Russia and China to establish energy relationships with developing countries, have fostered new interest and investment in nuclear energy from the federal government.

“I’m a believer,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in February, calling for nuclear power to play a big role in fueling the AI revolution. “Our goal is to … figure out what kind of nudge we might need to get shovels in the ground and next-generation small modular reactors happening,” he said. “I think they will be part of the solution.”

Governors and legislators are pursuing a raft of policies to advance nuclear energy. Last year, 25 states passed some type of pro-nuclear policy, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), an industry lobbying group. “That was a historic number. We’ve never seen that much support,” says Christine Csizmadia, a state policy manager at NEI. “If we don’t see an increase this year, I would be surprised.”
These policies have ranged from simple steps such as establishing nuclear task forces and commissions to more concrete policies that include incorporating nuclear in clean energy plans, lifting nuclear moratoria or other restrictions, creating tax credits and financial incentives, and investing in supply chain infrastructure and workforce development to support the nuclear industry. Last year, for example, California initiated a $400 million loan to extend operations at the Diablo Canyon nuclear facility, which had been set to be decommissioned this year. Washington state allocated $25 million to help a consortium of public utilities pursue small modular reactors. And Kentucky created a new Nuclear Energy Development Authority.

States are angling for position in the race to build advanced reactors, including small modular ones, which the federal Department of Energy has promoted with grants through its Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. Such reactors have the theoretical advantage of being cheaper and faster to build, though none have been completed and proven commercially viable yet. TerraPower, a company founded by Bill Gates, is working to build an advanced reactor in Wyoming that uses liquid sodium for cooling, which offers a much higher boiling point than water. Other advanced reactors are expected to be operational in the next half-decade through a combination of research and commercial ventures.

Lawmakers in red and blue states alike are pursuing the trend. Minnesota, for example, could lift the state’s outright ban on new nuclear facilities, which is the strictest moratorium in the country, dating back to 1994. In previous sessions, Democrats championed new rules that require power utilities to hit certain targets for emissions reductions and use of renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Keeping up with those targets is costly and challenging, says GOP state Rep. Chris Swedzinski, who introduced the bill to lift the state’s nuclear ban. Minnesota “doesn’t have enough farmland to ruin with solar panels” to meet the expected growth in energy demand, he says. Lifting the moratorium doesn’t mean endorsing a specific nuclear site, Swedzinski says, but he hopes it would prevent the state from being left out of a nuclear resurgence occurring in surrounding areas.
The Indiana House has advanced a bill creating a 20 percent tax credit for small modular reactor manufacturing. The bill also would allow developers to recoup construction costs from utility ratepayers even before new reactors are up and running. That’s the kind of financing, called Construction Work In Progress (CWIP), which left South Carolina ratepayers responsible for the abandoned Virgil C. Summer facility. But it was also used to build the two new reactors at Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Burke County, Ga., which began operating in 2023 — the first new nuclear reactors to come online in the U.S. in three decades.

Indiana state Rep. Ed Soliday, a Republican who is backing the bill, says it will benefit ratepayers in the long run. “Unless you’re going to say we’re not going to touch SMRs until 10 or 20 years after the first one is built, you are taking some risk with the ratepayers. I’m not going to lie about it,” Soliday says. “But you’re taking [a risk] whether you do CWIP or not.”

Democratic lawmakers, historically more sympathetic to the anti-nuclear movement than Republicans, are now promoting nuclear projects as well. Diablo Canyon, California’s sole nuclear facility, provides 10 percent of the state’s electricity. The plant was the site of mass protests prior to its opening in the 1980s. California has done more than most states to promote solar and wind energy and was banking on those sources to meet its carbon-free targets over the next few decades. But concerns about the reliability of the state power grid in recent years have changed the calculus. In 2022, Gov. Gavin Newsom backed a deal to extend operations at Diablo Canyon for
at least another five years.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, also a Democrat, has embraced efforts to restart operations at the Palisades nuclear facility. The Biden administration set a goal of tripling nuclear energy in the U.S. by 2050. A 2023 Gallup survey showed an upsurge in support, with 55 percent of all respondents — including 62 percent of Republicans and 46 percent of Democrats — saying they strongly or somewhat favor using nuclear energy.

The swell of interest has increased pressure on federal agencies to streamline the regulatory process. The five-member Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has final say over reactor construction in the U.S. Getting a new reactor approved takes years, with extra layers of regulation on top of an already arduous process that’s required for all types of large-scale infrastructure, including renewable energy. Congress passed the ADVANCE Act in 2024, directing the NRC to make certain oversight procedures more efficient. “It’s probably the only bipartisan issue in D.C. right now that Republicans and Democrats generally agree upon,” says Patrick O’Brien, government affairs and communications director at Holtec International, which is working to restart the Palisades plant in Michigan.
Still, despite all the work to promote nuclear energy, there are essentially no new commercial reactors under construction in the U.S. currently. TerraPower is building a testing facility for its Natrium reactor in Kemmerer, Wyo., but has yet to receive a construction permit for the reactor itself from the NRC.

Although the environmental movement has fractured to some degree over the issue, there are still pockets of deep resistance to nuclear development in the U.S., and lingering questions about its danger to people and the environment. The nuclear industry has been proclaiming its safety relative to other energy sources since its earliest days. Industry leaders note that the worst nuclear energy accident in U.S. history, the 1979 meltdown at Three Mile Island, didn’t result in a single verified death. Those talking points have become more salient in the face of growing recognition of the harms caused by fossil fuels.

But the country has yet to develop a long-term solution for storing uranium waste, which remains radioactive and hazardous to human health for thousands of years. Waste is currently stored in dry casks at individual energy plants. The federal government spent decades studying the possibility of a deep geological repository for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but that effort was canceled during the Obama administration. “This is a poisonous source of energy,” says Tim Judson, executive director at the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, an anti-nuclear group that was founded in the late 1970s.

Many residents in nuclear communities remain fearful of an accident. John Laird, a Democratic state senator in California whose district includes Diablo Canyon, says during the process of extending the plant’s operations he got calls from his former colleagues on the Santa Cruz City Council who’d been arrested at protests prior to the opening of the facility. Laird didn’t take a position on the extension, but says he worked to make sure the deal didn’t come at the cost of the state’s long-term commitment to renewables. “In the discussions there was real pressure to make [Diablo Canyon’s operation] open-ended, and we really resisted it,” he says. “We want to have the pressure on renewable, and if there’s not enough renewable, or the wind isn’t coming online, then we’ll have the discussions. But we didn’t want to presuppose the outcome of those issues.”
Meanwhile, the nuclear industry has yet to solve its foundational economic challenges. The federal government and private investors have put billions into researching and developing new technologies. But for all their purported promise, SMRs and other advanced reactors have yet to prove themselves to be commercially viable. Some are skeptical that the industry will ever get there absent massive ongoing subsidies. “Is there a way to make nuclear power safer and cheaper at the same time? There may be, but I don’t think anyone has found that yet,” says Ed Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “There have been false renaissances before.”

For the time being, the prospect of new sources of reliable energy, and the associated economic development, are proving to be too good to pass up for many state and local leaders, not to mention energy-hungry tech companies. Microsoft has made a deal to restart one of the retired reactors at Three Mile Island, the most potent symbol of the nuclear industry’s decline, and to purchase all of the power it generates.

In Wyoming, Kemmerer residents have embraced the development of the TerraPower nuclear reactor there, says Brian Muir, the city administrator. Kemmerer’s coal plant, long a major local employer, is set to shut down due to competition from cheaper natural gas. That means lost jobs at the plant as well as a nearby coal mine. The town has welcomed the promise of new energy-industry jobs, and the chance to be at the forefront of a nuclear revival. “Economically, I’ll just tell you,” Muir says, “it was a huge relief.”