Less than two weeks after President Trump signed a series of executive orders intended to “usher in a nuclear energy renaissance” in the United States, major nuclear energy projects have suddenly moved forward. The bureaucracies at the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, long known for stalling nuclear projects, seem to have undergone a metamorphosis.
On the same day (May 23) he issued the nuclear orders, the NRC gave the green light to a new uranium mine in Utah after a record 14-day environmental review. Under emergency procedures already in effect, the Department of the Interior on May 12 had announced that Velvet-Wood would be granted an expedited permitting review by DOI’s Bureau of Land Management.
Just moments after being sworn in on January 20, President Trump declared a national energy emergency, stating that “the energy and critical minerals identification, leasing, development, production, transportation, refining, and generation capacity … are all far too inadequate to meet” America’s needs.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on April 24 announced an alternative National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) compliance process in which projects analyzed in an environmental assessment, which used to take up to a year, will be done within two weeks, while review periods for those requiring a full environmental impact statement (EIS) will be cut from two years to about 28 days.
In addition to uranium, energy resources now included in this fast-tracked permitting process include crude oil, natural gas, lease condensates, natural gas liquids, refined petroleum products, coal, biofuels, geothermal energy, kinetic hydropower, and critical minerals. According to Burgum, “We’ve got to build more base load power. We got dangerously out of whack between intermittent, unreliable, expensive versus the affordable, low-cost base load.”
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The Velvet-Wood uranium-vanadium reopening and expansion project, owned and operated by Anfield Energy (a Canadian company), was the first beneficiary of this refreshed Trump administration review process that allows for contemporaneous agency reviews. Under prior administrations, this single step toward new uranium production would have taken years.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the approval “marks a turning point in how we secure America’s mineral future.” The approval enables Anfield Energy to restart the old Velvet Mine in San Juan County and develop the nearby Wood mineralization in a three-acre area. Local officials say that reopening and expanding the existing underground mine will bring new jobs and infrastructure. While most of the work will be underground, Anfield will restore the land once mining has ceased.
Anfield also intends to reopen its Shootaring Canyon uranium mill – one of only three licensed, permitted, and constructed uranium mills in the United States. The reopened mill will convert uranium ore into uranium concentrate to reduce America’s reliance on imported concentrate.
A week later (May 29), the NRC approved NuScale Power’s design for 77-megawatt reactors two full months sooner than expected even under the new administration. NuScale, which is leading the race to be the first to build a commercial-scale U.S small modular reactor, won approval back in 2020 for a 50-MW reactor design.
The NRC approval allows NuScale to build and operate a nuclear power plant, which company President and CEO John Hopkins says could be in operation by the end of the decade if a customer moves quickly. NuScale says it is in talks with five “Tier-1 hyper-scalers” it cannot name because of non-disclosure agreements to build five SMRs.
Also in May, the nation’s largest public power company, the Tennessee Valley Authority, announced it submitted a construction permit application to the NRC for a small modular reactor (SMR) at its Clinch River site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. TVA President and CEO Don Moul hopes that, by being the first, it can show other public utilities a new way to accelerate the development of SMRs. The TVA is already reviewing applications from private companies that want to build these reactors that could begin providing power in the early 2030s.
Meanwhile, The Nuclear Company is seeking to develop a series of reactors using existing designs. The company, founded in 2023 by three serial entrepreneurs, is prioritizing sites that already have permits or licenses – likely data centers and tech companies – to operate and are able to support reactors producing up to one gigawatt (GW) of generation capacity, with a goal of five reactors generating 6 GW in its first full fleet.
In addition to the expedited permitting process, another reason for the surge in nuclear permitting is that, for the moment at least, the Biden tax credits of up to $15 per megawatt-hour, granted under the Inflation Reduction Act, are still in place – but could end at any time.
In other news, Utah-based EnergySolutions is, with WEC Energy Group, exploring the potential for reopening a nuclear power plant – adding nuclear energy capacity to its Kewaunee Power Station in Wisconsin. The two companies are embarking on a multi-year plan to pursue federal approval that includes in-depth site and environmental studies – though the time frame could be cut significantly thanks to the national energy emergency.
The Kewaunee Power Station, designed and licensed to generate about 1,772 MW-thermal, began commercial operations in 1974 and was shuttered in 2013. The 30-year process of major decommissioning and dismantlement of the facility began in 2022 but would be halted if the decision is made to reopen the power plant.
On June 2, California-based nuclear startup Radiant announced it had secured sufficient funding to begin work on developing portable nuclear microreactors using advanced nuclear technology. Radiant’s Kaleidos is a 1-MW microreactor engineered for modularity, rapid deployment, and diesel-generator replacement at such locations as remote mining and logging operations, data centers, and factories.
Radiant is one of five U.S. companies selected to receive high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU) under the Energy Department’s strategic enrichment program. The first Kaleidos prototype is scheduled for live testing in 2026 at the Idaho National Laboratory’s DOME (Demonstration of Microreactor Experiments) facility.
Duggan Flanakin is a senior policy analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow who writes on a wide variety of public policy issues.