By Kennedy Maize
Donald Trump highlighted energy in the 2024 campaign and in the early days of his disruptive, chaotic administration. Many in the nuclear power business hope Trump will mean good news for their interests.
They are probably wrong, although it’s unwise to rule out anything given Trump’s Brownian attention span. The available evidence is quite clear that Trump has no so far shown no particular interest in boosting U.S. nuclear power’s prospects.
A deep Google dive linking “Trump” and “nuclear” produces no useful hits. Likewise, a search in the archives of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal? Nada.
Trumps “drill, baby, drill” campaign mantra, recycled from Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign, was all about gasoline pump prices. That’s smart populist politics.
The price of gasoline is the most visible economy-wide price signal to Americans. We see it almost every time we drive. Trump overstates gas prices during the Biden years, but they did briefly reach record highs. Gas prices are even more prominent than the price of eggs.
When Trump became president in Jan. 2017, the average retail price of regular gasoline was $2.46/ gallon. At the end of his first administration, gas was $2.84/gallon. When Biden took office, the price had slid to $2.40. In June 2022, gasoline hit a high of $5.03/gallon. By last December, the average price was $3.13. The White House has no direct control over gas prices.
Trump understands the grip of gasoline prices and the simplicity of the drill, baby slogan, regardless of whether it has any significant policy implications. Nuclear isn’t nearly as visceral, visible, or exploitable. It doesn’t move public emotions.
Trump did nothing significant or high profile about nuclear in his first administration. His first energy secretary was Rick Perry, a well-coiffed Texas O&G politician and former governor. When Perry left after a feckless two years, his successor, who had been his deputy, was Louisianian Danny Ray Brouillette, a former congressional staffer and mid-level private-sector oil and gas lobbyist and congressional mendicant in the George W. Bush DOE.
On his first day in office, Jan. 20, 2025, Trump issued a lengthy executive order (which it is unlikely he actually read), “Declaring a National Energy Emergency.” The word “nuclear” appears nowhere in the document. The closest is one reference to “uranium” in a list of mineral energy resources.
Also, “Department of Energy” appears only once in the E.O., linked to the Department of Interior in a reference to a new cabinet-level working group headed by Interior. That’s probably because DOE has virtually nothing to do with oil and gas. The Interior Department appears repeatedly throughout the document, as its control of federal land is significant for the oil and gas industries.
Turning to DOE – where nuclear is a bit higher on the policy totem pole – Energy Secretary Chris Wright also comes from the oil and gas business. A legitimate billionaire, he founded a successful firm that specializes in providing equipment for fracking. Wright has invested in small modular reactor startup Oklo and served on the company’s board of directors. He resigned to avoid a conflict of interest.
Wright on Feb. 5 issued a lengthy document outlining his policy goals for DOE, titled “Unleashing the Golden Era of American Energy Dominance.” Among Wright’s nine top priorities for DOE, nuclear was seventh, ranking well below LNG exports, home appliance energy standards reform, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and nuclear weapons.
On civilian nukes, Wright wrote that “the Department will work diligently and creatively to enable the rapid deployment and export of next-generation nuclear technology.” DOE has little to do with nukes on the ground but supports technology development. It has no regulatory authority.
The conservative National Review magazine chose to hype Wright’s statement on nuclear and largely ignore the other, higher priorities.
The Wright statement is the sort of typically anodyne document that any incoming secretary would make. Is Wright more enamored of nukes than his Biden administration predecessor Jennifer Granholm?
Hardly. Among other major grants DOE made to nuclear ventures during the Biden years, including Oklo, Granholm steered $1.6 billion in taxpayer dollars to Holtec International’s project to restart the Pilgrim nuclear plant in her home state of Michigan.
Wright’s assistant secretary for nuclear is lawyer Ted Garrish, a Republican retread going back to the first Reagan administration as DOE’s nuclear assistant secretary and a Maryland craft brewer on the side. Garrish headed DOE’s hapless civilian nuclear waste program in the George W. Bush administration. He was DOE assistant secretary for international affairs in Trump 1.
Next, there is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC has an enormous impact on nuclear power where the reactor hits the road. Trump has promoted a Republican commissioner to be the chairman, as provided for under the law governing independent energy commissions. But Democratic commissioners will be a majority at the NRC at until mid-2027 at the earliest.
That timing is significant, as it is after the 2026 midterm national elections, when the party out of power historically makes gains.
Trump can’t legally fire NRC commissioners. It’s unlikely he would try to test that barrier for an issue about which he doesn’t appear to give a hoot.
Overall, the best summary of the impact of the Trump administration on the U.S. nuclear power industry, despite hype promoted by nuclear interests who pretend they know where Trump is going, is the English translation of a French aphorism: “Plus ç change.” The more things change, the more they stay the same.
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