US Energy Secretary Chris Wright has placed nuclear power at the center of the Trump administration’s energy strategy with unmistakable clarity. “The only way to make America better is to add energy,” he declared on September 27, 2026, outlining a plan that encompasses the restart of shuttered plants and the construction of new reactors on an industrial scale.
The most significant move came on June 23, 2026, when the Department of Energy announced $17.5 billion in funding to accelerate the development of 10 new large-scale commercial reactors. The loans — amounting to $3.5 billion each for five two-reactor projects — will be complemented by roughly $5 billion in combined equity from utilities and Westinghouse. Construction on the plants could begin by 2030, with operations expected to come online in the mid-2030s. Wright explained that building at volume across multiple sites will help strengthen a robust industrial supply chain and build construction expertise, with the explicit goal of cutting timelines and costs compared to the Vogtle project.
At the same time, the administration is pushing ahead with the restart of prematurely closed plants. Palisades in Michigan has received $100.45 million from the DOE and is set to become the first commercial reactor in the United States to return to service after a shutdown. In Pennsylvania, the Crane Clean Energy Center — formerly known as Three Mile Island — is expected to come back online by 2027 to power Microsoft‘s data centers. In New York, Wright has publicly backed the restart of Indian Point, which was shut down in 2021, pointing to the state’s among-the-highest electricity costs in the country as a direct consequence of that decision.
On the near-term capacity front, the UPRISE program — launched in March 2026 by the Office of Nuclear Energy — aims to add 2.5 GW of nuclear capacity by 2027 and 5 GW by 2029. The Department of Energy has also launched a pilot program to accelerate the development of advanced microreactors, with the goal of bringing at least three next-generation reactors online. On July 24, 2026, the administration celebrated reaching the milestone set by Trump’s May 2025 executive order: three advanced test reactors brought to criticality by July 4.
Driving all of this is the surging demand from artificial intelligence data centers. Wright pointed to a potential need for tens — possibly hundreds — of gigawatts of new generating capacity to support American reindustrialization and keep pace with soaring digital consumption. Two-thirds of Americans now support nuclear energy, with particularly strong backing among those under 40. If the plans hold — the supply chain, the permitting, the financing — the US nuclear sector could emerge from the next decade profoundly transformed compared to the industry that stood largely still for thirty years.
