Key Takeaways:
More than a year after President Trump promised a nuclear energy renaissance, the US is no closer to building a single new reactor — and the Energy Department projects capacity will actually decline through 2050.
The White House signed a flurry of executive orders in May 2025 designed to "usher in a nuclear energy renaissance," with a stated goal of quadrupling US nuclear generation capacity to 400 gigawatts by 2050 from roughly 100 GW in 2024. But the Energy Department's April 2026 Annual Energy Outlook shows no increase — and a slight absolute decline — in nuclear capacity over the next 25 years under both baseline and high-demand scenarios.
"The administration has fallen into a technology trap," Paul H. Tice, senior fellow at the National Center for Energy Analytics, wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. Rather than sticking with proven gigawatt-scale pressurized and boiling water reactors, officials have focused on unproven technologies like fusion and small modular reactors (SMRs — factory-built units typically under 300 megawatts) that "will likely never move the needle on generation," Tice said.
The current US fleet of 96 operating reactors includes more than 50 different commercial designs, an excessive degree of diversification that has complicated regulatory approvals and deprived the industry of economies of scale from standardization. The only Generation III+ design built and brought online in the US this century is the Westinghouse AP1000, a 1.1-gigawatt pressurized water reactor — and the last two units, completed at Plant Vogtle in Georgia over 2023-24, came in way over budget, took more than a decade to finish, and bankrupted Westinghouse in the process.
The $80 Billion Deal That Went Nowhere
The White House in October 2025 signed a partnership between the Commerce Department and Westinghouse's owners to jump-start construction of 10 new AP1000 units worth $80 billion, with construction targeted for 2030. In exchange for government financial support through the Energy Department's Loan Programs Office and expedited permitting, the US government received a participation interest in Westinghouse cash distributions and the option to take 20% of any future initial public offering.
Eight months later, not one AP1000 contract has been signed in the US.
The impasse is not on the supply side — Westinghouse is in a strong financial position under its new post-bankruptcy ownership, Tice noted. The problem is demand. No US electric utility is willing to proceed with a new AP1000 project because of the outsize capital commitments and poor returns associated with green-field nuclear construction. The investment risks remain prohibitive even though the technology has been de-risked by existing operating units and the next build should arguably be cheaper and faster.
Private Equity as the Way Forward
Tice proposed a solution: Trump should summon leading Wall Street infrastructure private-equity managers — firms like BlackRock and Blackstone that now own an increasing number of US electric utilities — and pitch them directly. These private-equity investors have stronger risk management skills and development expertise than traditional regulated utilities, he argued, and nuclear construction fits their growth-oriented investment thesis.
"Once private-equity owners get the AP1000 ball rolling and show proof of concept, the rest of the utility industry should eventually follow suit," Tice wrote. He added that a forceful push by state utility commissions and federal agencies will also be required because regulated utility executives are risk-averse.
The stakes are rising. Nuclear power is needed to stabilize America's power grid and keep pace with accelerating load growth from the digital economy, including data centers powering artificial intelligence. Under a best-case scenario, a new AP1000 reactor takes four to five years to build — meaning any construction started today would not come online before 2030 at the earliest.
For investors, the stalled renaissance creates a mixed picture. Westinghouse's potential IPO — which would give the US government a 20% option — becomes less attractive without a domestic order book. Utilities exposed to nuclear generation face continued regulatory uncertainty, while natural gas and renewable developers stand to benefit from the gap in baseload capacity. The broader message is clear: without a fundamental shift in how nuclear projects are financed and de-risked, the US nuclear industry will continue its slow decline rather than deliver the renaissance policymakers have promised.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
