The private funding will be important because, despite the DOE selection, each company is responsible for all of the expense in designing, manufacturing, construction, operations and decommissioning of their pilot test reactors.
Time, as well as money, is of the essence: the Trump DOE intends to have at least three of the selected reactor projects achieve construction, operation and criticality by July 4, 2026-less than a year away.
What those 10 companies gain now is the DOE seal of approval and ability to utilize expertise at the highest national level, although the Reactor Pilot Program is seeking testing sites outside of the national labs. The federal OK also helps streamline regulatory processes normally held under the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which takes multiple years to complete.
The selections, according to the DOE announcement, “(unleash) a new pathway toward fast-tracking commercial licensing activities,” for SMR and other advanced nuclear projects which are seeking an alternative to conventional utility-scale nuclear power plants such as the recent Vogtle III and IV expansion. Georgia Power’s Vogtle added gigawatts of carbon-free nuclear to the U.S. electricity portfolio but cost close to $35 billion and took 10 years to complete.
“President Trump’s Reactor Pilot Program is a call to action,” said Deputy Secretary of Energy James P. Danly. “These companies aim to all safely achieve criticality by Independence Day, and DOE will do everything we can to support their efforts.”
The fiscal and physical logic behind SMR development
Whereas the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor units used at Vogtle are capable of 1 GW or so, the planned SMR projects will focus more on smaller footprints ranging in capacity from 30 MW to 300 MW in many cases. Chemical firm Dow is working with next-gen reactor startup X-energy and seeking NRC approval to build an SMR plant to power the company’s Seadrift manufacturing operations in south Texas.
No SMRS have yet been built or commissioned in the U.S., although some projects are also advancing in other nations such as Canada, Russia and China. Several U.S. SMR applications are progressing toward construction and design approvals by the NRC, but the new DOE program seeks to speed that process up.
In May, the Trump Administration issued “Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy,” an executive order calling for streamlining of the next-gen SMR process.
“The United States cultivated the effort to design and build the first Generation IV reactor for commercial use, but the federal government has effectively throttled the domestic deployment of advanced reactors, ceding the initiative to foreign nations in building this critical technology,” the president is quoted in that executive order. “That changes today. It is the policy of my administration to foster nuclear innovation and bring advanced nuclear technologies into domestic production as soon as possible.”
Underway: Selected companies already working on technologies
Among the companies selected, Aalo Atomics, Natura Resources and Terrestrial Energy already are pursuing research and development in partnership with Texas A&M University. Natura is also collaborating with Abilene Christian University on developing a molten salt test reactor at that campus.
California-based Oklo is collaborating with the U.S. Air Force on developing a microreactor to be installed in Alaska, as well as signing a supply deal with Siemens Energy.
Traditionally renewable energy project developer Ameresco has shifted some of its focus into the future of SMR and selected Terrestrial Energy as one of the design firms to aid in research efforts.
Grid demand forecasts by entities such as Goldman Sachs and Deloitte are predicting as much as 125 GW of new load coming online in the next decade due to growing demand of artificial intelligence training models and data centers.
“Advanced reactors — including microreactors, small modular reactors, and Generation IV and Generation III+ reactors — have revolutionary potential,” reads Trump’s executive order. “They will open a range of new applications to support data centers, microchip manufacturing, petrochemical production, healthcare, desalination, hydrogen production, and other industries.”
