The Trump administration announced Wednesday that three advanced nuclear reactors built by U.S. companies had reached key operational milestones, meeting its July 4 goal to advance the nascent technology it hopes will revolutionize the power sector.
A reactor from Houston-based Deployable Energy became the third during Trump’s term to reach criticality, in which it produces a stable nuclear chain reaction, as part of a program sponsored by the Energy Department. The administration’s focus on deploying smaller nuclear technologies comes as U.S. energy demand is soaring, driven in part by the rise of power-hungry data centers.
Work on the new reactors that are a fraction of the size of the existing plants producing power today has been accelerating in recent years, and the White House has framed their development as key to launching a “nuclear renaissance.” But experts say it could still be years before a significant number of such small modular reactors are built to contribute a meaningful supply of electricity.
The Trump Energy Department has thrown its weight behind the nuclear industry, sharply expanding efforts from the previous administration to develop the SMRs that the industry hopes will be quicker and easier to develop than the large reactors that currently provide about 20 percent of the U.S. electricity supply.
