Trump administration announces $17.5 billion in loans for 10 new large nuclear reactors

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: ABC News/AP

June 23, 2026, 12:34 PM


WASHINGTON -- The Trump administration is providing $17.5 billion to speed the development of 10 new large nuclear reactors to meet the skyrocketing power demand from massive data centers.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright cited “tremendous interest” among developers of data centers that would buy the power, as well as utilities and energy companies. The nuclear plants could begin construction by 2030 and become operational in the mid-2030s, Wright and other officials said Tuesday.

“This is the start,” Wright said on a call with reporters. “We’re going to move with the players that are ready to stand up and move quickly. Once that supply chain is up and running, do we think there will be dozens of these built going forward? I’d be very surprised if there were not.”

Most U.S. nuclear power plants were built between 1970 and 1990. Only two new large reactors have been built from scratch in the United States in recent decades. Those two reactors, at Georgia Power Co.’s Plant Vogtle, were completed years late and billions of dollars over budget. The 10 new reactors will use the same design, Westinghouse’s AP1000.

Read more: https://abcnews.com/Business/wireStory/trump-administration-announces-175-billion-loans-10-new-134137821

[GenThePerservering]

1. Nuclear reactors themselves don't bother me

it's them being built during this hapless administration.

[reACTIONary]

9. True that! Hopefully...

.... they don't "mastermind" the actual construction.

[highplainsdem]

13. They've slashed safety regulations for plant construction/operation. There were posts here about that some time back.

[highplainsdem]

14. Just found the thread I posted then, which links to another thread about it:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220976814

[reACTIONary]

15. Thanks!

[reACTIONary]

17. It seems that these changes apply....

....to the Reactor Pilot Program, to expedite the demonstration of advanced nuclear designs, not to full scale production facilities. Not that that is a good thing, but it probably does not apply to the 10 new large nuclear reactors. I hope.

[highplainsdem]

20. They've been weakening safety requirements everywhere. Contnuing to do so with nuclear reactors. See

what I just found doing some quick googling...

From the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists last month, about the presidential action in the link below:
https://thebulletin.org/2026/05/the-trump-administrations-reckless-attack-on-radiation-protection-will-have-long-term-consequences-for-public-safety/

From the Trump regime last year:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/ordering-the-reform-of-the-nuclear-regulatory-commission/

Facebook post from the NRC just today, linking to new nuclear safety requirements:
https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1456940449807969&id=100064760827007

[reACTIONary]

24. Thanks!

[highplainsdem]

22. Response from the AGs of several Democratic states:

https://oag.maryland.gov/News/pages/Attorney-General-Brown-Urges-Nuclear-Regulatory-Commission-to-Maintain-Public-Safety-Focus-When-Licensing-Nuclear-Microreac.aspx

[Bengus81]

29. We had one built in Kansas 40 years ago and it sky rocketed our rates. All they've

done is gone up. We had the highest rates in a five State area early on and probably still do. Any time our buds at Evergy JACK rates (nearly 10% last Oct) those of us south of KC pay the brunt of the increase for one reason, Wolf Creek.

It will have to be decommissioned in 10-15 years according to them. That will be a MASSIVE rate increase if I'm alive to pay it. No one needs to ever believe the bullshit from the owners about "cheap" electricity from those plants. It will never happen.

So now this fucking NAZI wants to loan his energy barons pallets of CASH from tax payers to build these plants?

[pecosbob]

2. Most likely as dedicated power for data centers.

[pnwmom]

3. And what are their plans for the nuclear waste? nt

[republianmushroom]

7. They will let Dems take care of that small problem.

[WSHazel]

4. There is no rational reason to build new nuclear plants

Future increases in demand for electricity are dependent on massive increases in data center demand, which is economically impossible. Either the LLMs are going to get a lot more efficient, reducing demand for data centers, or the LLMs fail altogether, which reduces data center demand. Either way, straight lining capacity need off projected growth while holding technology steady, is an asinine assumption.

If the markets don’t need all these data centers, they won’t need huge, fixed production power plants that use old technology like nuclear power.

If there is a gap in power needs vs. capacity and there must be more power generation, using alternative to fill the gap is the logical path since it is so much cheaper than nuclear and it doesn’t compute. It also has much shorter lead times than nuclear.

Finally, if it is determined that nuclear must be part of the equation, why wouldn’t the market wait for miniaturization of nuclear which seems likely in the next 5 years.

In other words, there is no reason to start building expensive nuclear power plants that take a decade to build, may be unnecessary, and will certainly be obsolete by the time they are operational.

[maxrandb]

18. You're overthinking it

Donnie Dipshit's band of thieves don't give a rats ass if it's necessary, cost effective, or safe.

You think Greenwater Solutions, run by knock-off Bruno Tataglia, is the only no-bid contract they're going to dole out?

They won't care if these are never built. They just want the grift.

I will be surprised if Barron fails to get into the nuclear power plant construction business.

His dad is a genius, afterall...just ask him.

[msongs]

5. my $2800 solar rooftop been working silently for 18 yrrs and NO cost overrun. paid off 10 yrs ago

[republianmushroom]

6. But wind turbines cause cancer.

So we're told.

[in2herbs]

8. If Congress has the purse and must approve what the expenditure is for, how does F45 have the

authority to do this?

[reACTIONary]

10. These loans are financed....

.....through the DOE’s Title 17 Energy Financing Program. The Title 17 program operates using existing borrowing authority, credit subsidy appropriations, and permanent loan guarantee authority established by Congress across multiple past statutes rather than a single specific congressional bill.

[modrepub]

11. Not Enough

The last large-scale nuclear power plant privately built cost $25B and took over a decade to build; so in today $, that price tag is on the low side.

The only way this is feasible is if the money is paid back over 30+ years. Nuclear power on a cost per megawatt basis is WAY more expensive than other forms of electricity production. It costs more to build a nuclear power plant and to operate it compared to other forms of electricity production.

So like just about everything this administration does and Republicans support, it's gonna cost taxpayers more. It's mind boggling how just about everyone thinks Republicans and Trump have a mind for business.

[not fooled]

12. Yeah, just wait

Presumably the power provided by any of these plants (if built) will be considered part of the grid/pool of power available to all ratepayers. All ratepayers will be paying the cost of these plants = the idea that the tech oligarchs will be covering the cost is just another lie krasnov's administration tries to fob off on the public.

[Bengus81]

30. Those plants were so GD expensive to build forty years ago it almost BK KG&E in Kansas

What saved them? A MASSIVE rate increase before the plant was even operational.

[flamingdem]

16. Same company that built the reactors at Fukushima

Just sayin...

[slightlv]

19. I keep feeling something inside me that says we're in for a major

disaster of some sort in the mid August to October timeframe. Nuclear ideas like this just intensifies that feeling. My first two thoughts were a terrorist attack (ala 911) or a major F5 hurricane hitting, and there be no fed money for those impacted. The latter is my favorite, only because I wish something would completely drown to the ground Mar-A-Lago.

[hunter]

21. Better this than gas power plants which will have killed billions of people...

... drowned major cities, and destroyed the natural environment as we have known it when this civilization is burnt toast.

[lonely bird]

23. Hmmm

Howzabout we store the waste on Bezos, Musk and Zuckerberg personal properties. Or on Sam Altman’s or the rest of the Crypto/Techbros?

[DBoon]

26. maybe we can convince them that neutrons have life-extending properties?

[Bengus81]

31. How about we build one in the West palm beach area?

Rich fucks know they will never live in their Mansions within 50-100 miles of any plant,gas fired or Nuke. That's were poor people live.

[LudwigPastorius]

25. Just kick that plutonium waste down the road for future generations to worry about.

Hey, they've got 24,000 years to figure out something!

[58Sunliner]

27. Moron.Hurry up and bed down for your dirt nap.

[Lonestarblue]

28. Trump is paying billions to cancel wind power while paying billions more to support nuclear power.

Both are clean energy, but we have the not-so-little problem of storing spent fuel with nuclear. Trump called wind turbines ugly, but nuclear power plants are super ugly and I certainly would not want to live next to one. I do not trust this administration to regulate the building and safety of nuclear power plants since they'll push for incompetent contractors friendly to Trump.

Meanwhile China is moving ahead with hydrogen power, another clean energy alternative. I doubt anyone in Trump's confederacy of dunces even knows about it.

https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202511/04/WS69095ac8a310f215074b8d00.html

[hunter]

32. I think I'd rather see one Diablo Canyon sized nuclear power plant...

...than 600 square miles of ugly wind farms, hundreds of acres of battery storage, and two or three large gas power plants as some supposedly clean alternative.

Should our civilization survive, which seems less likely with each passing day, the fissionable elements in reprocessed nuclear fuel will be a valuable energy resource. Today's wind and battery installations will all be trash, probably within my own remaining lifespan should I live as long as my parents did.

The physical and thermodynamic properties of hydrogen make it a dismal prospect as a replacement for fossil fuels. I've been watching hydrogen fuel projects fail for fifty years now and have known personally some prominent proponents of the "hydrogen economy." Nothing is going to change.

I used to be an anti-nuclear activist and a pretty radical one at that. Now I'm not.