The United States federal government is channeling billions of dollars into keeping existing nuclear plants running, restarting shuttered reactors, and clearing the regulatory path for advanced designs. Across multiple agencies, a series of concrete actions taken since 2024 have moved nuclear energy from political talking point to funded, permitted reality. The speed of these moves, and the scale of capital behind them, suggest the industry’s revival is now self-reinforcing, though a serious fuel supply gap could still slow it down.
Billions Flow to Keep Reactors Online
The clearest signal that Washington is serious about preserving its nuclear fleet came when the Department of Energy finalized up to $1.1 billion in Civil Nuclear Credit payments for California’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant, a commitment detailed in DOE materials on the credit award structure. That award, backed by a completed NEPA Record of Decision and environmental impact statement, is designed to prevent the premature closure of a plant that still generates carbon-free electricity for a large swath of the state. Without the credits, Diablo Canyon faced retirement, which would have forced California to replace roughly 2,200 megawatts of baseload power during a period of rising electricity demand.
The credit program reflects a broader federal bet that losing existing reactors is more expensive than saving them. Operators across the country are also pursuing 60‑to‑80‑year subsequent license renewals tracked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which maintains tables of plants under review and future submittals. Extending the lives of aging reactors is the cheapest way to maintain nuclear output while new construction catches up, and the NRC’s renewal pipeline indicates that a significant share of the fleet is headed in that direction. On Capitol Hill, members have framed this as part of a multi‑year push to modernize regulation and expand nuclear energy nationwide, a theme highlighted in a Western Caucus summary of recent legislation and oversight efforts.
Palisades and Vogtle Prove Restarts and New Builds Work
Michigan’s Palisades Nuclear Plant is attempting something no American reactor has done before: come back from permanent shutdown. The NRC rescinded the plant’s permanent shutdown certifications under 10 CFR 50.82 after Holtec International filed notifications to shift the site from decommissioning back to operations, a reversal reflected in the commission’s public reactor profile for the facility. That regulatory decision was not symbolic. The agency now maintains a dedicated restart inspection and oversight page for Palisades, compiling inspection reports, activity plans, and public correspondence as the plant works toward relicensing and eventual power production.
Federal money is backing the effort. The Department of Energy approved a fifth loan disbursement under its loan guarantee for the Palisades restart, with cumulative disbursement totals climbing as the project hits milestones; DOE’s own loan update underscores that the financing is tied to specific construction and licensing progress. In parallel, the NRC has updated related technical documentation available through its legacy information finder portal, signaling that staff are treating Palisades as an active restart project rather than a static decommissioning site. Separately, Plant Vogtle Unit 3 in Georgia entered commercial operations, delivering carbon-free nuclear energy to millions of customers and proving that the United States can still complete large reactor construction, even if Vogtle’s timeline and budget ran well past original estimates. Together, Palisades and Vogtle represent two distinct proof points: that shuttered plants can be revived and that new builds can reach the finish line.
Advanced Reactors Clear Regulatory Hurdles
The next generation of nuclear technology is no longer confined to white papers. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued construction permits for Kairos Power’s Hermes 2 test reactor facility in Tennessee, a molten‑salt‑cooled design that differs sharply from conventional light‑water reactors and appears in the NRC’s 2024 licensing docket for non‑power reactors. The permit signals that regulators are willing to process novel technologies through formal licensing rather than stalling them in review cycles. In the same vein, the NRC has published a proposed Part 53 rule in the Federal Register, as described in its 2024 advanced reactor highlights, which would create a new licensing framework tailored to non‑traditional designs and risk‑informed oversight.
Private capital is following the regulatory signals. Nuclear technology firm Oklo Inc., backed by Sam Altman, stands to receive up to $2 billion in investment from newcleo for U.S. nuclear fuel development, according to reporting from Reuters correspondents. That deal targets the fuel side of the supply chain, which is exactly where the industry’s biggest vulnerability sits, especially for advanced reactors that cannot use today’s standard fuel assemblies. The Department of Energy has also awarded $11 million to develop transportation packages for high‑assay low‑enriched uranium, or HALEU, the specialized fuel that many advanced designs require. Without certified shipping containers and a domestic enrichment pipeline, reactors like Hermes 2 could win permits but lack the material to operate, leaving cutting‑edge hardware stranded for want of fuel.
The Fuel Gap That Could Stall Everything
For all the momentum in licensing and construction, the nuclear revival faces a hard constraint: enrichment capacity. A top supplier has warned that fuel shortages threaten the U.S. nuclear resurgence, according to the Financial Times analysis, which cites bottlenecks in domestic enrichment and the country’s lingering exposure to Russian nuclear supply chains. Congress has already moved to ban imports of Russian nuclear fuel, but those restrictions risk tightening the market further in the short term unless replacement capacity comes online quickly. The result is a paradox in which policy support, permits, and private investment are accelerating, even as the physical ability to supply enriched uranium lags behind.
Market observers have started to factor this tension into their outlooks for the sector. A recent perspective from Bloomberg Intelligence, prepared in connection with an index designed to track nuclear‑related equities, notes that the industry’s comeback is increasingly visible in public markets and that fuel supply will be a key variable for investors building exposure through vehicles such as the RCTR exchange‑traded fund; the report on indexing the atom highlights how enrichment, fuel fabrication, and related infrastructure are becoming investable themes in their own right. If enrichment capacity fails to keep pace with reactor life‑extensions, restarts, and advanced designs, those same markets could punish utilities and developers that find themselves long on steel and concrete but short on fuel. In that sense, solving the fuel bottleneck is not just a technical or regulatory task; it is a prerequisite for turning today’s nuclear policy wins into durable, gigawatt‑scale generation over the coming decades.
More from Morning Overview
*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
