A ground view of the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility construction project at the Savannah River Site, in Georgia, June 2010. Outdated regulations and high procedural requirements are inflating nuclear facility construction costs and slowing America’s clean energy expansion. (Department of Energy)

Three Reforms to Improve Nuclear Energy’s Economic Outlook

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Outdated regulations and high procedural requirements are inflating nuclear costs and slowing America’s clean energy expansion.

Nuclear energy is safe, clean, reliable, and scalable. It can power the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, revitalize industrial communities, and help meet our environmental ambitions. So why does building a nuclear plant in the United States cost so much?

Part of the answer is capital cost inflation and labor. Nuclear plants are capital-intensive and require many specialized engineers and expertise. But a significant and often overlooked driver is the regulatory framework. Not only was it built for a different era, but it also calcified into a system that increasingly added cost, time, and uncertainty without meaningfully improving public health or safety. 

Fortunately, that is changing. In recent years, laws signed by Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden prompted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to move toward a more pragmatic, performance-based, risk-informed framework. In the coming months, the NRC will finalize several critical rules to reduce the time and cost of deploying nuclear power. Taken together, these regulatory fixes will improve the economic outlook for nuclear energy, benefiting consumers, the economy, energy security, and the environment.

However, policymakers must not be complacent. One bill and two discussion drafts before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee would sustain that momentum. In recent testimony, I explained why these reforms could help........

© The National Interest