In the first year of President Donald Trump’s second administration, he established himself as an unabashed nuclear energy advocate – both promoting new projects and remaking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in an effort to speed up approvals.
While history will tell if 2025 spawns a full-scale nuclear resurgence, it is indisputable that there have been an explosion of nuclear plant announcements in the past year. Trump’s goal is to quadruple U.S. nuclear capacity by mid-century.
At the same time, Democrats in Congress questioned if Trump has compromised safety and endangered NRC independence in seeking to speed up nuclear plant approvals.
Along the way, 2025 saw the longest government shutdown in United States history.
Undoubtedly, one thing has been prominent throughout the year: the Trump White House has been all in on nuclear energy. Here’s a look back on 2025.
Starting off the year, Trump nominated Chris Wright to be the secretary of energy, leading the Department of Energy and designated David Wight to become the chairman of NRC. Chris Wright, who was confirmed in February, was a then board member of Santa Clara, Calif.-based nuclear company Oklo. Chris Wright was advanced by the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and ultimately won a 59 – 38 confirmation vote in the full Senate.
In February, Trump selected Ted Garrish, who formerly led the Office of Nuclear Energy under President Ronald Reagan, to head the office again. Garrish testified before a Senate committee in late April but did not get confirmed until September.
Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, in an attempt to slash the government workforce the Office of Personnel Management sent a memo dubbed “Fork in the Road” where federal employees, including those working for nuclear agencies, could submit deferred resignations and stay on the payroll through September.
The memo said these workers would be exempt from layoffs, a hint of later layoffs courtesy of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Soon personnel concerns became a large talking point under the Trump administration. In March, Trump fired Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) board member Michelle Moore, a President Joe Biden appointee, later in March. Trump fired two other TVA board members: Joe Ritch and Beth Geer in April and June.
By June, the TVA board was left with three members out of a potential nine. The TVA board was unable to hold votes because it lacked a quorum. TVA’s board was soon replenished by the end of the year after the Senate confirmed four new members.
Perhaps the biggest nuclear firing of the year came June 13 when Trump fired NRC commissioner Christopher Hanson. Hanson was initially nominated by Trump during his first administration. Hanson was later appointed by Biden to chair the agency in January 2021. Hanson has chaired NRC for four years through January 2025.
However, the Supreme Court took center stage in June.
During a year where nuclear reactor announcements were rampant and major personnel changes, a landmark case for nuclear waste management also took place. On June 18, the Supreme Court affirmed the NRC’s authority to license private spent fuel storage facilities. In Nuclear Regulatory Commission v. Texas, the NRC was challenged by Fasken Land and Materials and Texas over the agency’s issuance of a license to Interim Storage Partners to build and operate a private spent fuel storage facility in West Texas. The Justices found the plaintiffs were not eligible to challenge NRC’s regulatory decision on legal grounds, reversing an earlier decision by the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Holtec International, who had a proposed independent spent fuel facility in New Mexico, welcomed the decision in June. Holtec obtained a license to operate a consolidated interim storage facility in May 2023, but was then vacated by another court’s decision, but was once reinstated due to the Supreme Court ruling. With the road cleared for the company to construct its storage facility in New Mexico, Holtec announced in October it has discontinued those plans.
Trump solidified his role as nuclear power advocate in May. On May 23, Trump issued four nuclear-related executive orders in an effort to streamline nuclear project licensing. Among the executive orders, the Trump White House set out an ambiguous goal to quadruple nuclear generation to 400 gigawatts by 2050.
Fuel recycling recently found some traction in the United States as nuclear companies began to consider advanced fuel recycling technologies. In September, Washington, D.C.-based nuclear company Curio completed a laboratory-scale demonstration for its fuel recycling technology, NuCycle. Oklo announced plans to build a $1.68 billion advanced fuel recycling facility at DOE’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee.
Within the executive actions, in June, DOE set out a reactor pilot program to test out new advanced nuclear reactor technologies. The program set out a goal of having at least three reactors reach criticality by July 4, 2026.
DOE selected its 10 participants for the reactor pilot program in August and the race to criticality for their respective demo reactors began. Amid that, many nuclear companies and power utilities have taken an interest in bringing more nuclear power onto the grid.
In 2025, nuclear companies announced plans to restart reactors: Three Mile Island Unit 1 (now dubbed Crane Clean Energy Center) in Pennsylvania and Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa.
NextEra Energy, the operator of Duane Arnold Energy Center, signed a deal in late October with Google to pursue plans to restart the unit to help power Google data centers. Duane Arnold ceased operations in 2020. While the Three Mile Island Unit 1, located next to the TMI unit that melted down decades ago, owned by Constellation Energy, is looking to restart operations.
While Constellation considered plans to restart the reactor last year, DOE backed those plans in November by allocating a $1 billion loan to help resurrect it.
Though plans have been set into motion to restart closed nuclear reactors, Holtec International’s Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Michigan started the trend. Shut down in 2022, Palisades is on the cusp of becoming the first United States nuclear power plant to return to full operations.
Overcoming numerous challenges from various anti-nuclear groups for a number of years, Palisades received a slew of approvals in July and was granted operational status in August by NRC. Holtec said the 800-megawatt plant received fuel for the plant’s restart in October.
NRC was ordered to reinvent itself under the executive order 14300, Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The action called for the agency to do a complete overhaul of its regulations in order to accelerate the approval of new nuclear projects.
This overhaul was made more complicated given the mass exodus at the NRC. Many staffers retired or left, including then-NRC executive director of operations Mirela Gavrilas, who retired in June from NRC a year after assuming the executive director of operations role.
Meanwhile, David Wright’s term was coming to a close June 30, and he was renominated by Trump on June 16. He temporarily was away from NRC until reconfirmed by the Senate, July 28. But July 29, Annie Caputo, a Trump-nominated NRC commissioner, announced that she would step down from NRC once Wright was sworn back into the agency.
To fill the NRC vacancies, Trump nominated Ho Nieh and Douglas Weaver, two former NRC staffers, to join the commission panel. The two nominees faced scrutiny from Democratic senators who voiced concerns over the Trump White House’s handling of the nuclear regulatory agency. Both Nieh and Weaver vowed to prioritize nuclear safety and maintain the NRC’s independence.
By December, both Nieh and Weaver were confirmed, and sworn into the NRC commission, restoring the panel to full strength with five members.