What the Trump Administration’s New Executive Orders Mean for US Nuclear

The Trump Administration’s latest executive orders (EOs) aim to supercharge civil nuclear deployment across the US, promising to speed up licensing, cut red tape, and grow the nuclear fleet from 100 GW today to 400 GW by 2050. This follows a trend: Trump and his allies have long touted their support for nuclear energy, and to their credit, made some progress during the first Trump administration. 

The administration’s objectives for nuclear deployment are ambitious and reflect the urgency and gravity of what’s at stake. The EOs have the potential to positively strengthen supply chains, export competitiveness, and the efficiency of regulatory processes for the American nuclear energy sector. But, it will be all for naught if Congress and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) scrap funding, staff, and programs to implement these ideas.

Can Trump’s executive orders deliver on his Administration’s promises? Or is the ‘Nuclear Renaissance’ all talk? 

What’s in the Executive Orders? 

Trump’s orders touch four key areas:

• Reforming the NRC:This EO aims to increase the efficiency of NRC licensing and address undue delays and bottlenecks in the regulatory process, seeking to achieve these objectives through a combination of establishing fixed deadlines, reorganizations, and regulatory revisions. 
• Strengthening the Nuclear Industrial Base: This wide-ranging EO seeks to revitalize the domestic nuclear supply chain and workforce, with a special emphasis on accelerating progress across the nuclear fuel cycle (both expansion of fuel production and addressing spent fuel management). The order also establishes industry-wide goals to increase reactor efficiency and encourage large reactor new builds.
• Leveraging DOD and DOE to Accelerate Deployment: This EO primarily directs more robust utilization of DOD and DOE authorities on licensing and siting to spur initial deployments of US reactor technologies and other critical infrastructure. It also includes a range of provisions and objectives on nuclear exports, including strengthening overseas financing tools and expediting bilateral nuclear cooperation agreements.
• Reforming R&D at DOE: The intent of this EO is to streamline DOE reactor testing procedures, facilitating US nuclear innovation and instituting a pilot program for the approval of at least three reactors sited outside of the National Laboratories.

In Context: Trump’s Nuclear EOs vs DOGE, Congress, and More 

But positive signals from the executive branch aren’t nearly enough to overcome the transformative and destructive changes underway through the President’s preliminary budget request, DOGE cuts, and the recently introduced GOP tax package. 

There are numerous areas of deep concern regarding long-term harm to the nuclear sector: 

• President’s Budget Request: Trump proposes cutting nearly a quarter of the budget for DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy. A reduction of that size hinders US nuclear energy innovation, which is heavily dependent on DOE’s support for research and development. The budget request signals that the Trump Administration will make historic cuts to the agency charged with research, development, and deployment of nuclear. That directly contravenes the stated goals of Trump’s executive order ‘Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing,’ which calls for a considerable expansion of nuclear R&D. Essentially, the Administration is asking the Department of Energy to do more with considerably less. 
• Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE): DOGE has proposed massive reductions in force across all agencies relevant to nuclear deployment. On top of EO-directed NRC workforce reductions, firings are underway at DOE and elsewhere, predictably leading to chaos, uncertainty, and delays. Two smaller offices playing critical roles in nuclear manufacturing and deployment are uniquely impacted: DOGE has pursued a 60% cut to the Loan Programs Office (LPO), which provides critical financing for new nuclear projects, and a 75% cut to staff at the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, which is overseeing the two largest advanced nuclear demonstration projects in America’s history. Trump’s executive order on NRC reform calls for DOGE-guided staffing cuts at the agency while also calling for more NRC staff dedicated to “certain functions.” If that seems contradictory, that’s because it is. Trump’s executive order simultaneously calls for more new hires and more layoffs at the NRC—and it calls for all staff to work faster, requiring expedited licensing and regulatory overhaul. These contradictory directives create real uncertainty as to the agency’s ability to keep up with expanded development and deployment.
• House GOP Slashes LPO and Inflation Reduction Act tax credits: Energy Secretary Chris Wright himself stated that DOE LPO “is really the most efficient tool we have in the department to help emerging energy technologies,” and the industrial base EO calls upon Secretary Wright to “prioritize activities that support nuclear energy… through the Department of Energy Loan Programs Office.” Technology-neutral production (45Y) and investment (48E) tax credits are necessary to attract private capital and investment at a critical stage of development of these technologies. Without them, it is almost impossible to build nuclear reactors in the United States (as evidenced by the paucity of new nuclear deployment in the US pre-IRA). But the House tax package cuts LPO credit subsidies and sunsets the tech-neutral credits in 2031 and creates new eligibility requirements to make them essentially unusable in the interim, provisions that appear to be particularly harmful for nuclear. Simply put, the House’s “Big Beautiful Bill” will make the budding resurgence of new nuclear energy impossible.

What Does This Actually Mean for Nuclear? 

The principles behind these orders are strong: the Administration has previously pledged to speed reactor development and deployment and cut costs for developers, and they lay out some of the policies needed to do so in these EOs. Some of these provisions—including pushing for NRC reform and working to strengthen the fuel supply chain—are things Third Way and our allies have pushed for over the past 15 years. We agree that many of these efforts should be strong priorities for the United States, helping to meet our energy needs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and strengthen America’s position here and abroad. 

But ultimately, the executive orders will require considerable action from Congress to implement, including appropriating robust funding for the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy and preserving existing incentives for nuclear energy expansion. Without these mechanisms, it is not clear how the Administration can accomplish the goals they set out in each of Trump’s four executive orders. 

The Administration may say they want to build 300 GW of new nuclear by 2050, but their actions will make it extremely difficult (if not impossible) to actually do so. The so-called ‘Nuclear Renaissance’ is undermined by a combination of self-inflicted wounds: sweeping staffing cuts, regulatory overhauls that threaten the NRC’s ability to meet the nuclear industry’s needs, and deep funding reductions to the very programs needed to build the next generation of nuclear.

Conclusion: What Now?

Nuclear has been central to Third Way’s Climate and Energy Program since our founding in 2009. It is tempting to celebrate these executive orders as rare bits of good news in a dire moment for clean energy writ large. But we urge our fellow advocates to exercise caution here. These EOs are nothing but talk if they aren’t backed up with real funding for nuclear, robust staffing, and an administration that’s serious about building new nuclear, not just talking about it.