Can America Build Nuclear Again? Part 3

Federal policy options for a nuclear forward agenda

This week I participated in an event at AEI — How Will the US Unleash Commercial Nuclear Power? — which you can view here. In parallel, I am publishing a three-part series on U.S. nuclear power. You can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here. Today, in the final installment of the series, I review some of the policy proposals that leading analysts of U.S. federal nuclear policy have proposed to address the issues that I discuss in the series. At the bottom of this post, for THB paid subscribers, I share a substantial XLS file with all data, sources, and links of the series. As always, this is work in progress — Caveat Lector!

Part 1 of this THB series argued via a cross-national comparison that nuclear cost escalation does not follow inevitably from the technology. Part 2 argued that U.S. cost escalation traces to federal policy choices that had both intended and unintended consequences.

This post reviews options from nuclear policy experts consistent with those posts — drawn from academic research, government reports, and policy organizations. Source citations accompany each option. The literature on nuclear energy policy is vast, and this review is far from comprehensive. Let me know in the comments what good stuff I’ve missed and you would recommend to add constructively to the conversation. Honest brokering is a group activity!

Political Landscape

Currently, nuclear energy is enjoying favorable bipartisan policy tailwinds — a rarity in 2026. For example, in 2024, the ADVANCE Act (Pub. L. 118-67) passed the Senate 88–2 and the House 393–13. Executive Order 14300 (May 2025) directed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to accelerate licensing and reform risk-based regulation. Microsoft, Amazon, and Google have signed nuclear power purchase agreements. The American Nuclear Society has documented 350+ nuclear bills introduced and 60+ enacted across 45 states in 2025.

These tailwinds reflect an alignment of interests: Republicans cite grid resilience and strategic competition with China; Democrats seek a proven 24/7 carbon-free source at scale; industrial policy advocates in both parties see a domestic manufacturing opportunity; and technology companies, facing growing power demand, see nuclear as a natural fit

Combined with growing public support for nuclear, the moment may be ripe for Congress to consider nuclear energy policy more comprehensively than it has in a half century. This post reviews some of the policy options that Congress might consider, drawn from the recommendations in the “Source basis” boxes within each section below.¹

Institutional Reform: A Joint Committee on Nuclear Energy (JCNE)

Source basis: CRS Report RL32538, Christopher M. Davis (2004); Green and Rosenthal, Government of the Atom (Atherton Press, 1963); 9/11 Commission Report (2004), p. 420; Department of Energy Organization Act, Pub. L. 95-91 (1977).

Since it was terminated in 1977, no formal proposal for a nuclear-specific successor to Congress’ Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE) has appeared in the congressional record. The closest precedent was when the 9/11 Commission (2004) recommended a joint intelligence committee using the JCAE as its model. Congress declined to implement that recommendation, but the notion of a joint committee as a means of empowering Congress to take a comprehensive view of a specific policy area remains a powerful tool in the legislative organizational toolbox.

One option in support of a nuclear forward agenda: Congress creates a new Joint Committee on Nuclear Energy (JCNE) — say, nine senators and nine representatives, evenly divided between the parties — holding authorizing and oversight jurisdiction over civilian nuclear energy policy. As Part 2 discussed, a tension between promotion and regulation contributed to the 1977 abolition of the JCAE. In contrast, a new JCNE would carry purely legislative and oversight authority.

A new JCNE might be given explicit statutory jurisdiction over NEPA as applied to NRC-licensed facilities. No single committee in either chamber currently holds this authority. NEPA jurisdiction is distributed across Environment and Public Works, Energy and Commerce, and others, with none carrying a specific mandate for nuclear — the legacy of a 1971 court ruling that Congress has not revisited. A JCNE would provides a legislative institutional home for the more specific policy options discussed below nd do so without having so many cooks in the kitchen.

Let’s next take a close look at policy options recommended by nuclear policy experts that would address the issues discussed in Parts 1 and 2.

Near-Term Options (1–3 Years)

Reform 1: Enforce ADVANCE Act Licensing Timelines

Source basis: ADVANCE Act (Pub. L. 118-67, 2024); CRS Report R48480 (2024); 42 U.S.C. § 2011 et seq. (Atomic Energy Act).

The ADVANCE Act set 18-month review windows for standard light-water reactors and 24 months for first-of-a-kind designs. The NRC has typically treated such timelines as aspirational; the Congressional Research Service (CRS) documented a six-year average for combined license applications.

Option: amend the Atomic Energy Act to make timelines enforceable, with a deemed-approved mechanism — subject to explicit safety findings — if the NRC misses statutory deadlines.

Expected impact: $300-$800/kW in avoided financing costs at 7% (details for all estimates can be found in the XLS at the bottom of the post). Timeline: 2-3 years post-enactment.

Reform 2: Codify a Nuclear-Specific NEPA Pathway

Source basis: Calvert Cliffs’ Coordinating Committee v. AEC, 449 F.2d 1109 (D.C. Cir. 1971); NRC NUREG-1437, Generic EIS for License Renewal (4th ed. proposed 2024); Nuclear Innovation Alliance, key reform recommendations (2024); 42 U.S.C. § 4321 (NEPA).

As discussed in Part 2, the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) required for each nuclear license traces to Calvert Cliffs (1971), which since then has never been subject to a congressional vote. The Nuclear Innovation Alliance identifies NEPA requirements as among the highest-priority reform targets.

Option: amend NEPA to allow a completed Generic EIS for a certified standard design to satisfy the “detailed statement” requirement at qualifying sites, with a site-specific supplement for seismic, hydrological, and population factors. Combined with Reform 6 below, this could reduce this aspect of review by more than two years — resulting in approximately $600–900/kW in avoided interest costs.

Reform 3: Codify Design Finality

Source basis: 10 CFR 50.109 (the backfitting rule); Lovering, Yip & Nordhaus, “Historical Construction Costs of Global Nuclear Power Reactors,” Energy Policy 91:371–382 (2016); Executive Order 14300 (May 2025).

Lovering et al. (2016) document that post-Three Mile Island backfitting produced a 2.8× cost premium on plants then under construction. Executive Order 14300 directed the NRC to set stringent mid-construction thresholds — legislation would codify that change beyond any single administration.

Option: amend the Atomic Energy Act to require an “imminent and substantial hazard” finding before imposing safety-significant design changes once construction begins.

Expected impact: eliminates mid-construction backfitting risk, saving approximately $680–1,130/kW over a ten-year construction period.

Reform 4: Expand DOE Loan Guarantees to $100 Billion

Source basis: Energy Policy Act of 2005, Title XVII (Pub. L. 109-58), 42 U.S.C. §§ 16511–16514; OECD/NEA, “Financing New Nuclear Power Plants” (2022).

The single biggest reason nuclear power costs so much to build is not steel and concrete — it's the cost of borrowing. A nuclear plant takes ten or more years to build before it generates a single dollar of revenue, and investors who wait that long demand a high return to compensate for the risk. The OECD's Nuclear Energy Agency found that financing comprises the largest component of the overall costs of building new nuclear. The federal government already has a tool to address this: Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 lets the Department of Energy guarantee nuclear construction loans — the government co-signs, so lenders charge lower interest — but the current ceiling is $18.5 billion, and DOE's risk calculations are skewed by basing them heavily on Vogtle's cost overruns and the cancelled 1980s projects rather than the far lower failure rates oberved in South Korea, China, and the early years of France’s nuclear build out.

One option: raise the ceiling to $100 billion and require DOE to weigh the full international track record, which would bring interest rates on nuclear financing down from the current 8–10% to something closer to 5–6% — reducing the cost of nuclear electricity by roughly $20–30 per megawatt-hour, enough in most U.S. markets to make new nuclear more competitive with natural gas without any other subsidy.

Reform 5: Update Regulatory Delay Insurance

Source basis: 42 U.S.C. § 16014 (standby support, Energy Policy Act of 2005); Nuclear Innovation Alliance, “Key Recommendations for Reforming U.S. Nuclear Energy Regulation” (2024).

Building a nuclear plant means betting that regulators won't cause delays that escalate costs — a real risk, since NRC review timelines have run long for decades. Back in 2005, Congress created a form of insurance for this risk: if regulatory delays cost a developer money, the federal government would cover part of the loss, codified at 42 U.S.C. § 16014. But Congress only made this insurance available to the first six advanced reactor projects, and that list hasn't been updated in twenty years — so any newer project is out of luck.

The Nuclear Innovation Alliance recommends fixing this by opening the insurance to every new reactor design, dropping the extra paperwork step where DOE has to approve each project's eligibility, and making sure enough money is actually set aside to cover the full pipeline of projects that might need it. Combined with making NRC's own licensing deadlines binding (Reform 1), this option sends a clear signal to investors: the government will back up its promise of regulatory predictability with real money if it falls short — exactly the kind of assurance that makes private lenders willing to finance a nuclear project in the first place.

Medium-Term Options (3–10 Years)

Reform 6: Volume Licensing for Standardized Designs

Source basis: ADVANCE Act (Pub. L. 118-67, 2024); Choi et al., “Fourteen lessons learned from the successful nuclear power program of the Republic of Korea,” Energy Policy 37(12):5494–5508 (2009); DOE Liftoff Report, Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Advanced Nuclear (2023).

Under current policy, even if a reactor design has already been approved once, building it again at a new site means going through nearly the same lengthy review from scratch. The ADVANCE Act created a fix for this called volume licensing, which lets a single approved design get reused across multiple sites without repeating the full review each time, though the detailed rules for how this will actually work aren't expected until late 2026. South Korea built 16 nearly identical reactors this way, and the Department of Energy estimates that once a company builds the fifth through tenth copies of a standardized design, each one costs 25–40% less than the first ones.

One option: require regulators to finish the detailed volume-licensing rules within 12 months instead of leaving the timeline open-ended, and presume that any project built within that design's already-approved footprint can skip a brand-new environmental review if one has already been done for that design.

Reform 7: A Federal Government Orderbook (5–10 Units)

Source basis: DOE Liftoff Report, Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Advanced Nuclear (2023); Idaho National Laboratory supply chain economics analysis.

New nuclear faces a supply chain chicken-and-egg problem: A reactor depends upon giant forged steel components, specialized pumps, and control systems that require manufacturers to invest millions in equipment and expertise. But manufacturers won't make that investment without firm orders lined up, and utilities won't place firm orders without knowing the parts will actually be available and affordable. The Department of Energy has identified nuclear reactor supply chains as one of the biggest obstacles to building plants at scale. Idaho National Laboratory estimates that locking in orders for just five reactors of the same design could cut costs per reactor by 15–25%, simply by giving manufacturers the certainty to invest.

One option: have the federal government become that first reliable customer, committing to buy nuclear power for its own facilities — national laboratories, military bases, data centers running federal systems — across 5 to 10 reactors of a single design. In the private sector, tech companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google have already signed long-term deals to buy nuclear power for their own data centers, proving that a big, reliable buyer can give the industry the confidence to scale up. A federal commitment would work alongside those private deals, not replace them.

Reform 8: Require Front-End Engineering Maturity (70–90%)

Source basis: Eash-Gates et al., “Sources of Cost Overrun in Nuclear Power Plant Construction Call for a New Approach to Engineering Design,” Joule 4(11):2348–2373 (2020); DOE Liftoff Report, Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Advanced Nuclear (2023)

One of the reasons nuclear projects experience cost escalation is that construction often starts before the design is actually finished. Researchers studying cost overruns and the Department of Energy both point to this issue: at the Vogtle plant in Georgia, crews building the physical pieces of the reactor were working from blueprints that engineers kept revising even after construction had begun. The result was that 40–80% of the components had to be reworked or rebuilt to match updated specs — contributing to why the project ran behind schedule.

One option to fix this going forward: require that a nuclear project's engineering be 70–90% complete before regulators issue a construction permit, which is already the standard practice in industries like petrochemical plants and LNG terminals that build similarly complex facilities. Making this the rule for nuclear construction could save an estimated $1,000–2,500 per kilowatt of capacity and shave two to four years off the typical construction timeline — simply by making sure plans are essentially complete before breaking ground.

Reform 9: National Nuclear Construction Center

Source basis: Choi et al., “Fourteen lessons learned from the successful nuclear power program of the Republic of Korea,” Energy Policy 37(12):5494–5508 (2009) (on South Korea’s KOPEC); DOE Liftoff Report, Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Advanced Nuclear (2023).

Choi et al. (2009) document how KOPEC institutionalized construction knowledge across consecutive South Korean reactor programs. The 30,000 workers trained during Vogtle’s construction scattered when the project closed; the next project team starts largely from scratch.

Option: fund a DOE construction center — $100–200 million annually — at a national laboratory to maintain and distribute construction playbooks, QA protocols, module specifications, and schedule management tools. The Vogtle 3-to-4 improvement (approximately 30% efficiency gain, 20% cost reduction within a two-unit program) illustrates cost reductions through learning.

Long-Term Options (10+ Years)

Reform 10: Domestic Nuclear Manufacturing Investment

Source basis: Liu, He, Qiu & Kammen, “China reins in the spiralling construction costs of nuclear power — what can other countries learn?” Nature 643:1186–1188 (2025); Defense Production Act, 50 U.S.C. § 4501 et seq..

Liu et al. (2025) trace China’s cost reduction from approximately $6,150/kW to $1,540/kW primarily to domesticating supply chains.

Option: authorize a Defense Production Act-style manufacturing investment program ($3–5 billion over ten years) for domestic firms building nuclear-grade manufacturing capacity. Expected impact: 10–20% unit construction cost reduction for a mature fleet along with reduced supply chain geopolitical risk.

Reform 11: Contracts for Difference

Source basis: UK Energy Act 2013 (c. 32), establishing the Contracts for Difference mechanism; OECD/NEA, “Effective Frameworks and Strategies for Financing Nuclear New Build” (NEA No. 7684, 2024); IRS Section 45Y (Clean Electricity Production Credit).

A nuclear plant operates for 60 years, but nobody can predict what electricity will sell for that far into the future — and that uncertainty makes investors nervous about putting up the billions of dollars a plant costs to build. The OECD's Nuclear Energy Agency has found that one of the most effective ways governments make nuclear investment attractive is by removing that uncertainty by guaranteeing the price of its electricity over the long run. The United Kingdom did this in 2013, setting up a system where the government guarantees a minimum price for nuclear electricity for 35 years, giving investors the certainty they need. The U.S. has something similar but much weaker: the Inflation Reduction Act's tax credit for clean electricity, which only lasts ten years — a fraction of a nuclear plant's lifespan.

One option: authorize federal agencies to offer the same kind of long-term price guarantee the UK uses, for nuclear projects that meet certain cost targets. Paired with expanded loan guarantees (Reform 4), this kind of price certainty could lower the cost of nuclear electricity by an estimated $35–50 per megawatt-hour.

States: A Coalition of the Willing

Source basis: PG&E v. State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission, 461 U.S. 190 (1983); DOE Office of Nuclear Energy; American Nuclear Society (2025).

As discussed in Part 2, sixteen states have laws on the books that specifically restrict or ban new nuclear construction — and trying to override those state laws from Washington would mean lengthy court battles that could drag on for years with no guarantee of winning.

The good news is that none of the federal options above require every state to get on board; a coalition of the willing states would be sufficient. That coalition is already forming: six states have repealed their nuclear bans since 2016 — Wisconsin, Kentucky, Montana, West Virginia, Illinois, and New Jersey — and four more (California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Vermont) currently have active efforts underway to do the same.

The federal government can support and accelerate this trend. When DOE chooses where to put its own facilities under the federal orderbook (Reform 7), it can favor states that have already cleared their nuclear barriers. Loan guarantees and long-term price contracts (Reform 4 and Reform 11) can likewise give priority to projects in states with friendlier rules.

Federal progress on a permanent nuclear waste storage site would have an automatic bonus effect: several states, including Minnesota and Oregon, wrote their bans to expire once the federal government solves the waste problem. If Congress adopts a significant nuclear forward agenda, we should expect other states to follow along. Everyone needs more reliable, secure, affordable energy.

Closing Note

Nuclear construction costs in the United States have escalated while other countries’ costs did not escalate to the same degree.. Part 1 showed that this divergence is not a function of the technology — nuclear plants built elsewhere, and built here decades ago, did not carry today’s escalated costs.

In the United States, nuclear energy production remained flat this century while natural gas generation has tripled. Part 2 traced the gap to seven specific federal mechanisms, compounded by an institutional blind spot: when Congress abolished the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy in 1977, it left nuclear policy split across many committees with no single one responsible for a comprehensive view of nuclear energy policy.

This concluding third post answers the question: What might be done?

The options above were not invented for this series — they draw on the recommendations of the experts who study and implement nuclear construction engineering, economics, and policy.²

The DOE Liftoff Report projects that a serial construction program following this path could bring the overnight cost of a tenth U.S. reactor down to $4,000–6,000 per kilowatt — still above what Korea and China have achieved, but competitive with natural gas on a full system basis, particularly considering (possible) carbon costs and fossil fuel price volatility.

Of course, a nuclear forward agenda would represent a political commitment requiring a coalition sustained for decades across two parties, multiple Congresses, and presidencies. Should U.S. leaders choose to organize in support of a nuclear forward agenda, many policy options are ready and available. Build baby build!

Before you go, one request — If you learned something in this series, let me know by clicking that “❤️ Like” button. Your feedback matters. Thanks!

Comments, critique, other views are all welcome!

This series is the result of a substantial research effort over the past few months. All data underlying the figures, full references to papers, reports, legislation, and grey literature, and the bases and calculations for every estimate can be downloaded in the 13-tab XLS file available below to THB's paid subscribers.