The Department of Energy is preparing to finance up to 10 nuclear power plants, according to Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
During a Monday visit to Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Wright said the Trump administration will use the agency's rebranded Office of Energy Dominance Financing to offer low-interest loans as a "nudge" to help jump-start an industry he said Washington "smothered … for 40-plus years."
"We want things built by and risk capital coming from the private marketplace," Wright told The Washington Free Beacon. But, he added, government policy and red tape have made it difficult to launch new nuclear projects, and the administration intends to reverse that trend.
Under the plan, the DOE would back "maybe the first 10 reactors that get built," pairing private equity with federal credit support to encourage rapid deployment.
Wright's comments underscore President Donald Trump's broader push to treat nuclear power as a strategic asset for energy security and national defense, especially as electricity demand spikes from artificial intelligence, data centers, manufacturing growth, and reshoring.
"We don't need a little more energy, we need a lot more energy," Wright said, arguing that nuclear and natural gas are critical to reliable baseload power.
The INL visit highlighted why Idaho is central to the administration's "nuclear renaissance." The lab is home to the first reactor that produced usable electricity from nuclear fission in 1951 and has hosted dozens of reactor designs over the decades.
In a town hall with INL staff, Wright called the lab "ground zero" for the renaissance and said the moment is different from past promises.
"It has been talked about for 20 years, but it's actually happening now," according to Idaho Falls-based Post Register.
The policy thrust is backed by Trump's May executive order aimed at accelerating nuclear deployment, rebuilding the domestic fuel cycle, and cutting licensing delays that have historically killed projects through bureaucratic drag.
The order calls for expediting nuclear production to provide "affordable, reliable, safe, and secure energy," while strengthening supply chains, expanding uranium conversion and enrichment capacity, and prioritizing actions that support restarting closed plants, uprating existing reactors, and constructing new, advanced reactors.
Notably, the executive order directs the DOE Loan Programs Office to prioritize activities supporting nuclear energy and sets aggressive benchmarks: facilitating 5 gigawatts of power uprates and having 10 new large reactors with complete designs under construction by 2030.
Wright also signaled a regulatory reset, arguing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission became "so bureaucratic, so slow" that it damaged nuclear economics.
The administration wants faster approvals for advanced and small modular reactors, which advocates say could be factory-built, deployable at scale, and better suited for modern grid needs.
For conservatives, the case is straightforward: America cannot win an AI-driven industrial race with an unreliable power strategy.
The Trump administration's bet is that unleashing nuclear, paired with private capital and streamlined rules, can deliver the kind of energy dominance Washington has blocked for decades.
Newsmax Wires contributed to this report.
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