WASHINGTON, D.C. – After a prominent year for nuclear energy, the industry needs to turn its focus towards building new generation at scale, Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) President and CEO Maria Korsnick said at a Tuesday forum.
To open the NEI’s 2026 Nuclear Energy Policy Forum, Korsnick said last year marked a year of serious investment from the private sector, modernization of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and major nuclear projects now underway.
The growing momentum of the nuclear industry over the years has led to big successes, as 90 projects are in development and eight projects have broken ground across North America, Korsnick said. This includes TerraPower’s building of the Natrium reactor in Wyoming and Kairos Power breaking ground on the Hermes 2 reactor in Tennessee, Korsnick said during her statement.
“So, the question before us is not whether we can build. It’s clear, we’re starting to show that we can,” Korsnick said. “But the question before us now is whether we have what it takes to build at scale.”
“When I look across our industry, at the innovation that we’ve demonstrated, at the capital we’ve attracted and at the construction we started, the answer is yes,” Korsnick continued. “Today the state of the nuclear energy industry is strong and getting stronger.”
Korsnick said the industry is “on the edge of a breakthrough” of building at scale, but it will require government funding, continued capital investment from the private sector and international buy-in to achieve this goal.
The federal government has made strides to fund recent nuclear projects across the nuclear fuel cycle, Korsnick said. This includes a $2.7 billion award to three U.S. companies to strengthen the domestic uranium enrichment capacity and pledged $80 billion to the construction of Westinghouse’s AP1000 reactors across the country.
On the private sector side, tech companies and hyperscalers have struck deals with several utilities and companies to bring new generation or shuttered reactors back online. However, Korsnick said these deals are not the finishing line but the starting point.