On Friday afternoon, President Donald Trump signed four executive orders aimed at overhauling the federal government's approach to building nuclear power plants. It’s part of a push to spur a renaissance of nuclear construction the likes of which the United States hasn’t seen since the 1960s and to catch up to China’s widening lead in the race to bring new reactor technologies into commercial operation.

The first order cleared the way for the Department of Defense to deploy new reactor technologies at military bases. The second order proposed staffing cuts, tighter deadlines, and a new approach to measuring radiation risk at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The third order directed the Department of Energy to speed up testing of new reactors and approve at least three new designs by July 4, 2026. And the fourth order laid out a plan to “reinvigorate the nuclear industrial base” by making federal purchases of fuel to give enrichment companies the assurances to reopen facilities in the U.S.

“We’re not fast enough,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at a press conference, standing next to the right of Trump at the president’s desk in the White House’s Oval Office. “We’re not keeping up with adversaries.”

Trump was flanked on both sides by the chief executives of companies such as Constellation Energy, the largest nuclear utility in the country, and Oklo, the Silicon Valley microreactor startup, each of whom heralded the orders as a historic step toward restoring American capacity to build reactors again at a significant pace.

The U.S. has built just three new reactors this century. The first – Unit 2 of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar Nuclear Plant – came online in 2016, but started its on-again-off-again construction in 1973.

The other two – a pair of state-of-the-art Westinghouse AP1000 reactors at the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in northern Georgia – were the only two new units built to a new design in decades. Construction began on the reactors in 2009, and it took until last summer for both to come online and cost more than $30 billion thanks to cost overruns.

“We’re not going to have cost overruns,” Trump said. “The technology has come a long way both in terms of safety and cost.”

The orders come not just as the Trump administration slashes staffing at key agencies the actions call on to help build up the nation’s atomic energy capacities again, but as Republicans in Congress vote to pare down federal tax credits to bolster nuclear power.

Depending on whom you ask, Trump’s actions either dramatically change the existing system or slapped the president’s imprimatur on reforms that were already in the pipeline.

“Today’s executive orders reverse four decades of stagnant bureaucracy and regulatory capture unshackling the potential of the most abundant and powerful energy source ever discovered,” Bret Kugelmass, the chief executive of the small modular reactor developer Last Energy, told me. His Washington, D.C.-based company had previously vowed to forgo building its plants in the U.S. until the federal government reformed its licensing and permitting rules.

But Brett Rampal, the senior director of nuclear and power strategy at the consultancy Veriten, warned that just because Trump ordered it doesn’t mean it will be done, and noted that certain directives – such as requiring 5 gigawatts of uprate improvements to get more power out of existing reactors or construction of new, large-scale reactors – were already underway.

“The majority of what’s in here is stuff that was already in process or stuff you can’t just handwave into existence,” he told me. “We were already doing uprates. We were already talking about new large reactors for the first time in this country in a long time. So, what do these executive orders do in those regards? Just reinforce and strengthen existing activities and trends.”

Adam Stein, the director of the nuclear energy innovation program at the Breakthrough Institute think tank, said the orders were, for the most part, “very good.” But the reforms to the NRC largely tracked with what was required under legislation former President Joe Biden signed last year.

“In terms of NRC, most of the order tells the agency to work on topics that are either mandated by the ADVANCE Act or otherwise already in process,” Stein told me in a text message.

A nuclear executive, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, called the press conference “hard to watch.”

“Feels like mostly stock pumping for Oklo, Nano and NuScale,” the executive told me, referring to a trio of publicly-traded U.S. small modular reactor startups. “Westinghouse has no shares to play with anymore. They’re like a bloody victorious gladiator and yet we hate them for their success.”

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I’m still digesting what’s in the orders and what they mean. But I rounded up some details that stood out to me so far:

1. Increasing U.S. nuclear capacity to 400 gigawatts in 2050 from 100 gigawatts today.

The NRC order directs the federal watchdog to “facilitate the expansion of American nuclear energy capacity from approximately 100 GW in 2024 to 400 GW by 2050.”

That additional 300 gigawatts of reactors will be difficult to achieve – requiring roughly one dozen new AP1000 reactors every year for the next quarter century, starting this year. At current construction rates, that’s not happening. But the target ups the ante on the Biden administration’s pitch from November to build 200 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity by the middle of the century.

2. Clearing the way for at least 10 more large-scale reactors

The order on “reinvigorating the nuclear industrial base” calls on the Energy Department to “prioritize work with the nuclear energy industry to facilitate” 5 gigawatts of power uprates to existing reactors “and have 10 new large reactors with complete designs under construction by 2030.”

Technically, there are other large-scale reactors with complete, NRC-approved designs that could meet that specification. While GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy has focused its reactor efforts on the company’s 300-megawatt BWRX-300 SMR – which is slated to debut later this decade in Ontario before starting construction at a Tennessee Valley Authority plant – the joint venture between GE Vernova and the Japanese industrial titan first built its 1,300-megawatt ABWR in Japan. The U.S. planned to build its first ABWR in South Texas until the project was canceled in 2018.

Another option could be the APR1400, the leading South Korean reactor on the market. The NRC certified the reactor for use in the U.S. in 2019. But the Trump administration’s focus on building up domestic companies means the U.S. probably won’t tap in the Korean design to meet its target.

The most likely technology to fulfill Trump’s order would be the Westinghouse AP1000. Despite the massive cost overruns, Vogtle Unit 4 came in faster and cheaper than Vogtle Unit 3, and the completion for four AP1000s in China has helped bring down the cost. Now that the supply chains are established, the workforce is trained, and the design wrinkles are ironed out, modeling by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Koroush Shirvan projects that building another AP1000 would be the cheapest option for the U.S.’s next reactor.

3. Opening the door to recycling nuclear waste

The “industrial base” order calls for a study into how the U.S. could set up a program to recycle and reprocess nuclear waste.

Readers of this newsletter may recall my reporting on this subject last month. The nation’s stockpile of spent nuclear fuel is largely seen as a liability, given that the U.S. has had no permanent waste disposal solution. The U.S. had built a permanent repository in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, but former President Barack Obama canceled the project in a move the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan in-house federal watchdog, declared a political decision, largely caving to pressure from then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat.

But part of what makes nuclear waste so radioactive is that it contains most of the energy locked in the uranium. So much, in fact, that within the U.S. stockpile of spent fuel there’s enough energy to supply the country’s power needs for more than a century.

This has spurred new interest in reprocessing and recycling that waste, as the French and Russians already do. The U.S. had started construction on a reprocessing plant in the 1970s, but then-President Jimmy Carter shut it down as a sacrifice at the altar of non-proliferation. Around that time, India became the first country to get the bomb since the signing of the global Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The infrastructure for extracting fuel from waste mirrors what’s needed to enrich radioactive materials to weapons-grade levels. To show Washington was serious about limiting production of new warheads, Carter banned reprocessing. Former President Ronald Reagan lifted the ban a few years later. But between the billions of dollars the developer lost on the project and the federal government promising to take responsibility for nuclear waste, it was no longer worthwhile for an investor to pump money into a commercial reprocessing facility.

That has begun to change. Companies including the French nuclear fuel giant Orano and U.S. startups including Oklo and Curio LV are working on bringing reprocessing to America.

But the provision has already drawn a backlash from the Obama-era Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, a nuclear physicist who warned that embracing recycling encouraged more countries to develop atomic weapons.

4. Ordering the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to do more with fewer staff

Despite the Trump administration’s push to speed up new nuclear plants, the president wants the federal regulator to do more with less.

The NRC order directs the agency to work with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to “undertake reductions in force in conjunction with this reorganization.”

Still, the order indicated that “certain functions may increase in size consistent with the policies in this order, including those devoted to new reactor licensing.”

5. Reassessing how we measure danger from radiation

The NRC order directs the agency to “reconsider” its reliance on the linear no-threshold model for radiation exposure that has long governed how the federal government measures nuclear risks.

The model assumes that even the smallest amount of radiation exposure increases cancer risks over time, requiring a standard of reducing radiation exposure to levels “as low as reasonably achievable.”

The so-called LNT model is controversial. The approach “fails numerous toxicological stress tests,” according to a paper published in 2022 by University of Massachusetts Amherst professor Edward Calabrese.

A 2020 paper in the journal Dose Response argued that the “LNT model is incorrect and was adopted based upon false pretenses.”

“The use of the model has been corrupted by many to claim that even the smallest ionizing radiation dose may initiate carcinogenesis,” the authors wrote. “This claim has resulted in societal harm.”

Sources who reviewed the Trump administration’s earlier drafts of the order said the White House initially proposed eliminating the use of the LNT altogether, and welcomed the final order’s more cautious approach.

6. Spending federal dollars to shore up the nuclear supply chain

Guaranteeing the federal government will buy things is one of the most effective tools a president has to spur the private sector toward specific ends. To that end, Biden invoked the Defense Production Act, a relatively obscure Korean War-era statute, to encourage manufacturing of solar equipment and heat pumps.

As part of his “industrial base” order, Trump pledged to spend money through that same law on not just reactors but procurements of nuclear fuel. That includes not just the traditional low-enriched uranium that powers the nation’s reactors, but also the High Assay Low Enriched Uranium, or HALEU, that is needed for certain advanced reactors.

7. Ending National Labs’ monopoly on reactor testing

Right now, companies can partner with national laboratories to construct pilot versions of new reactors on site to prove out the technologies.

As part of the reactor testing order, Trump ordered the Energy Department to establish a new pilot program that would authorize test reactors under the agency’s “sufficient control” to be built outside of the labs.

8. Easing security rules so it’s no longer so militarized

If you go to any nuclear power plant in the U.S., prepare to see a lot of guys wielding assault rifles. Atomic power stations are basically designed to be staffed with an on-site militia as if the plant were operating in a warzone, a measure that ramped up after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

That may change.

Under the NRC reform order, Trump called on the agency to “revise the Reactor Oversight Process and reactor security rules and requirements to reduce unnecessary burdens and be responsive to credible risks.”

9. Exporting American nuclear technology to 20 more countries

Bangladesh, Egypt and Turkey are currently building their first nuclear power plants. All of them are working with Russia to do so.

The Kremlin’s state-owned Rosatom dominates global nuclear exports. China, which so far has only exported its reactor technology to Pakistan, is expected to start selling its atomic wares overseas in the coming years.

The U.S. has a long way to go to compete, not least of which because federal law requires special treaties called 123 Agreements to be approved by Congress before American companies can sell nuclear technologies to any foreign country. The U.S. currently has 25 such 123 Agreements covering 49 countries.

But the Trump administration’s Defense Department order called for the U.S. to “aggressively pursue at least 20 new 123 Agreements by the close of the 120th Congress to enable the United States nuclear industry to access new markets in partner countries.”

10. Loosening rules for licensing next-generation reactors

In 2023, the NRC voted to regulate nuclear fusion technology under a completely different legal framework than the fission that comprises modern nuclear generation today. The move was hailed at the time as a victory for the nascent fusion power sector, freeing the so-called holy grail of clean energy from the onerous restrictions that have made fission difficult to build.

Trump just ordered the NRC to do something similar for next-generation fission reactors.

Unlike the first three generations of reactors, so-called “advanced” or fourth-generation reactors use coolants other than water and come in a wide variety of sizes.

At least, they would – in theory. China last year beat the U.S. to hook up its first reactor cooled with a high temperature gas up to the grid. Beijing has several more in the works right now. The U.S. is, as a result, more than a decade behind.

To catch up, the Trump administration ordered the NRC to regulate so-called Generation IV as if they’re research or medical reactors under the Atomic Energy Act. That could dramatically speed up the time it takes to license the nation’s first such reactor.

11. Stopping the NRC from doubling up on what other agencies do

Currently, the Defense Department or the Energy Department can approve and build pilot reactors. But if the company wants to commercialize that technology, the NRC won’t consider the other agencies’ approvals in its own process.

As part of the NRC reform order, Trump directed the regulator to “establish an expedited pathway to approve reactor designs that the DOD or the DOE have tested and that have demonstrated the ability to function safely. NRC review of such designs shall focus solely on risks that may arise from new applications permitted by NRC licensure, rather than revisiting risks that have already been addressed in the DOE or DOD processes.”

12. Saving a bunch of plutonium waste to use as fuel

Under the “industrial base” order, Trump directed the Energy Department to halt a program to dilute and bury a bunch of plutonium, the highly radioactive material used in weapons.

Some next-generation reactor technologies can use plutonium as a fuel. Rather than waste the material, Trump has ordered the Energy Department to “establish a program to dispose of surplus plutonium by processing and making it available to industry in a form that can be utilized for the fabrication of fuel for advanced nuclear technologies”

13. Using the Energy Department’s embattled lender to improve existing plants

The Energy Department's Loan Programs Office has been under assault since the start of Trump’s presidency. The agency’s in-house lender, with a $400 billion loan authority, has faced major staffing cuts as questions swirled over whether Trump would shut it down.

In March, this newsletter reported that the Energy Department had approved the LPO to disburse only its second tranche of money since Trump took office to pay out pledged funding to finance the first-ever reopening of a closed nuclear plant in the U.S. Last month, advocates across the industry and political spectrum signed onto a letter calling on the Trump administration to preserve the LPO as a tool for rebuilding the nuclear industry.

In the industrial base order, Trump appears to have taken the calls to heart. The order directs the LPO to “prioritize activities that support nuclear energy, including actions to make available resources for restarting closed nuclear power plants, increasing power output of operating nuclear power plants, completing construction of nuclear reactors that was prematurely suspended, constructing new advanced nuclear reactors, and improving all associated aspects of the nuclear fuel supply chain.”

Whether that’s possible with a staff that’s cut by as much as 60% remains to be seen.

The soundtrack to this edition is “Ta’m-e Gilās” by Parviz, the music moniker of the Paris-based composer and producer Alain Parviz Soltani, whose lush jazzy house grooves aim to capture the musical sounds of pre-revolutionary Iran. I fell in love immediately with this track and its album art. I hope you enjoy.

Signing off from a brisk Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where parents are reportedly trying to stop the city from allowing an electric vehicle charging station to replace a former KFC that’s been shuttered for years. The reasoning? Supposed health risks. Never mind the fact that if you walk a block in each direction, there are gas stations.