Energy policy is among the most polarizing issues up and down 2024 ballots, with candidates toeing distinct party lines, including those laid out in Vice President Kamala Harris’s and former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign platforms.
Democrats generally support the Biden administration’s emphasis on renewable energy. Harris is among those who say modernizing energy infrastructure from fossil fuels to carbon-free generation is key to slowing climate change and staying competitive in an electrified 21st-century economy.
There is little common ground in broad party positions, but one component of the energy mix has bipartisan support: nuclear power.
That narrow convergence is discernible in Trump’s and Harris’s energy policy planks. Both support expanding nuclear energy, but for different reasons.
Trump, in late August, espoused the development of small modular reactors and said he’d quickly approve new utility-sized power plants.
During an Aug. 29 stop in Potterville, Michigan, he said, “Starting day one, I will approve … new power plants, new reactors, and slash the red tape.”
Three days earlier, Trump told podcaster Shawn Ryan that nuclear energy is vital to sustaining an expanding electrical grid and powering artificial intelligence development.
“You'll need double the energy we produce right now just for that one industry if we’re going to be the big player,” he said. “Nuclear now has become very good, very safe, and you build the smaller plants.”
The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and 2022’s CHIPS & Science Act and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) incentivize the research and development of new types of nuclear power and the expansion of existing capacities.
Most were built between 1970 and 1990 and average more than 40 years in service. Only one new reactor has come online since 2016—Vogtle’s fourth reactor in Georgia, which became operational in April, was $16 billion over budget and six years behind schedule.
The administration’s Nuclear Power Project Management and Delivery working group is advancing efforts to convert 300 existing and retired coal plants to nuclear power, providing grants to cut costs for new plants by 35 percent, and partnering with private industry in its Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear initiative to commercialize new nuclear technologies.
It also expedites licensing, reduces applicant fees, and audits regulations to remove those “unnecessarily limiting” nuclear energy production.
That bipartisan consensus and increasing public support for nuclear energy are echoed by Harris’s pledges to sustain momentum for renewable, carbon-free power and by Trump’s vows to accelerate it to grow the industry. However, neither is specific in how they would do so.
American Energy Alliance policy and communications manager Alexander Stevens said the two candidates amplify a common perspective that the federal government plays an “outsized role” in regulating.
But that “big role” can involve assisting and hampering. While the IRA and other recent bills promote nuclear power, they do so under the nearly 70 new regulatory regimes encoded within the Biden administration’s renewable energy programs.
Dig for Divergence
While consensus is appreciated, more is needed to rapidly advance nuclear energy, said Scott Melbye, president of Uranium Producers of America (UPA), a coalition of industry miners and convertors.
“This bipartisan support is still a very recent phenomenon, but it is clearly built on a very sound footing,” he said.
“Democrats want carbon-free nuclear power to provide a 24/seven baseload support to intermittent renewables, while Republicans see nuclear as an abundant and reliable source of power in an ‘all-of-the-above’ energy strategy that will continue to feature fossil fuels.”
Both approaches work for New Mexico-based UPA, which represents 12 U.S.-based uranium extraction and processing companies that operate 15 In-Situ Recovery operations nationwide, including five that have reopened since the adoption of the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act in May.
Melbye, vice president at Texas-based Uranium Energy Corp., told The Epoch Times that UPA has not endorsed a presidential candidate but has suggestions for how the next administration could assist uranium mining and, in doing so, boost nuclear energy development.
“While public, bipartisan support now exists for nuclear energy growth in the United States, we still have some voices on the Left not supportive of domestic mining of a number of minerals critical to growing our advanced economy like uranium, copper, nickel, lithium, and cobalt,” he said.
Melbye said the regulation of uranium mining is particularly dense, with DOE, Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Interior (DOI), Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) all involved.
While both presidential campaigns support nuclear energy, states often hold the regulatory keys. That reality was emphasized at the National Conference of State Legislatures annual Legislative Summit in early August.
Nuclear Energy Institute senior project manager Kati Austgen said the industry is seeing states “removing barriers, incentivizing investment” to accommodate new reactor types.
Although 300 bills related to nuclear power in 45 states were introduced in the last two years, no utility-scale projects are proposed in the United States, she said, noting a president and Congress can’t change that without support from state lawmakers and regulators.
That’s because focusing on permitting reform doesn’t address seminal state and federal regulations, said Utah state Rep. Carl Albrecht, a Republican, noting that boosting nuclear power means loosening mining regulations, which the DOE claims it supports and the DOI appears committed to foil.
In 1980, the nation produced and processed 90 percent of the uranium that fueled its nuclear plants. In 2021, only 5 percent used in U.S. plants was produced domestically.
“There’s still a lot of uranium on the Colorado Plateau locked up on” federal public lands, Albrecht said. “We have to get the message to DOI that if we’re going to convert to nuclear, we have to mine and process” uranium.
That’s a knothole the next administration must address, Melbye agreed.
“One, we will need to license and permit new operations in a cumbersome regulatory process if we want to achieve further self-sufficiency,“ he said. ”And two, we can and will continue to rely on Western uranium suppliers, like Canada and Australia, for a portion of our energy needs.”
Melbye said the U.S. nuclear industry consumes 45 million pounds of uranium annually. When it led the world in uranium production, it supplied 40 million pounds annually to domestic plants.
A UPA survey concluded “under supportive policies and market conditions, the U.S. uranium industry could return to production levels of around 20-to-25 million pounds annual output in the next five years, largely from existing, licensed operations,” Melbye said.
The next administration can also accelerate nuclear energy development by tightening the capacity for “frivolous intervenor lawsuits to delay projects for many years,” Melbye said, or for agencies to “engage in overreach of their regulatory powers to stop industries they may have ideological opposition to.”
Melbye said Trump or Harris must end the Biden administration’s “wholesale withdrawal of millions of acres of federal land through wilderness designations” from development.
“These sorts of policies, often taken without the consultation of local interests, need to be stopped, and regulatory processes must see further streamlining,” he said.
