WASHINGTON, D.C. – The nuclear projects deadlines set out by President Donald Trump’s administration’s executive actions are aggressive but necessary, a panel of nuclear industry experts and members said Wednesday.
Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy Deputy Assistant Secretary Michael Goff, Department of Defense Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army Jeff Waksman, U.S. Nuclear Industry Council board of directors chair Jeff Merrifield, Westinghouse president of energy systems Dan Lipman and Amentum’s Senior Vice President and head of its Nuclear Center of Excellence John Eschenberg spoke at Amentum’s “Nuclear Resurgence” panel on Wednesday.
Reacting to President Donald Trump’s May 23 executive orders, DOE has recently created two complementary pilot programs to accelerate nuclear deployment. The two programs focus on deploying advanced nuclear reactors and deploying advanced nuclear fuel lines.
The goal of the reactor pilot program is to have at least three advanced reactors reach criticality by July 4, 2026.
Goff said the ambitious deadlines for these programs’ nuclear deployment are aggressive because they are critical to national security. Waksman echoed Goff’s point and added the aggressive deadlines will stimulate industry response.
“I think we can achieve this, but it will take a lot of work between us, the Department of Energy and [the nuclear] industry as well to be able to come up and meet these various goals,” Goff said.
DOE has received a significant number of applicants for the reactor pilot program and the department has begun reviewing them, Goff said. The deadline for the first round of the program’s applications was Monday.
Additionally prior to Trump’s orders, DOE issued a request for information on co-deployment of data centers at its national laboratories and received over 300 responses, noting a lot of industry interest, Goff added.
As the continued interest for nuclear energy proceeds, the DOE plans to announce which small modular reactor technologies it will move forward with as part of its Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program before the end of this summer, Goff said.
In the program there are two tiers, the first tier is for first mover team support, which $800 million is allocated to that tier. While the second tier is for fast follower deployment support, which has $100 million allocated to it, that has funds prioritized towards regulatory and design gaps. The program has $900 million collectively allocated to it.
