In February, the United States airlifted a nuclear microreactor for the first time. It was more than a technical achievement – it was a symbol of transformation, akin to the launch of the first steam-powered sailing ships that reshaped global commerce. And just as we couldn’t build the progress of the 20th century on the back of wind-powered ships, we can’t power the 21st-century economy with unreliable, weather-dependent energy sources. America’s future prosperity requires abundant, affordable and reliable power to complement America’s vast reserves of fossil fuels. The solution is clear: a new generation of advanced nuclear reactors.
America is entering a new era of industrial revival, powered by a surge in domestic manufacturing and the rise of artificial intelligence. This surge is creating an unprecedented thirst for electricity. After a decade of flat demand, America’s industries are roaring back to life. But grid operators are warning of a looming “reliability crisis” as reliable power plants are retired far faster than they are replaced.
Meanwhile, the demand from AI, electrification and resurgent manufacturing is projected to add as much as 166 gigawatts (15 times what New York City requires) of new peak load by the end of the decade – an unprecedented surge that will strain existing infrastructure.
For decades, nuclear power has stood as an unassuming giant in the power sector, providing nearly 20% of America’s electricity with unparalleled reliability. Today, a new generation of advanced reactors – small modular reactors (SMRs) and microreactors – is poised to expand nuclear energy’s role. These reactors are designed to be built in factories and assembled on-site, dramatically reducing construction times and costs.
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Their smaller size allows them to be deployed in more places, including at retiring coal plants to reuse existing grid infrastructure and skilled workforces. A single SMR module can power a large data-center campus or a cluster of factories.
Beyond electricity, these advanced reactors can provide high-temperature heat needed to make steel and fertilizer, a crucial industrial input that solar and wind cannot meet. SMRs can even power desalination plants to turn arid landscapes into thriving communities. Microreactors are already being developed to provide secure, resilient power to remote military bases like Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, freeing them from dependence on the grid.
The primary obstacle to this promising future isn’t physics or engineering; it’s a half-century of suffocating government bureaucracy. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) licensing framework was designed for the large reactors of the 1970s and is inadequate for today’s advanced designs.
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Congress ordered the NRC to create a modern, streamlined process, known as Part 53. But instead of a clear path forward, the draft rule is becoming another layer of complex, burdensome requirements that could delay innovation rather than enable it. This moves us further from, rather than closer to, the energy dominance agenda. Instead, we should end local bans on nuclear power and lower barriers to startups seeking to increase competition and innovation.
We must also reject outdated fears about nuclear energy. Today’s advanced reactors are not our grandparents’ power plants. They possess inherent safety features that make accidents exceedingly unlikely, if not physically impossible.
They also help us steward our environment responsibly: they produce immense quantities of energy from a tiny amount of fuel, with a minimal physical footprint, and no air pollution. This stands in stark contrast to solar and wind, which require vast tracts of land and large-scale mining for their construction and deployment.
Public perceptions must also evolve. There are some that still raise concerns about nuclear safety and waste. But the entire amount of used fuel from America’s nuclear industry over 60 years could fit on a single football field.
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This material, far from a crisis, is a manageable byproduct and can even be reprocessed to yield valuable minerals and re-usable uranium. The far greater crisis is a lack of energy, which consigns billions of people to poverty globally and threatens the stability of our own economy.
This is not just an economic issue – it is a national security imperative. While America’s nuclear industry is tangled in red tape, Russia and China are aggressively moving to export their own reactors across the globe, using state-backed financing to create decades-long dependencies.
Every market we concede to them is a loss for American influence and security, and every time an American SMR developer is stalled by bureaucracy, it is a victory for Moscow and Beijing. We can either lead the world in setting the gold standard for safety and non-proliferation, or we can cede the future of global energy to authoritarian regimes.
America has always thrived when it embraced bold technologies and rejected complacency. So now is the time to be bold. The AI boom and the return of manufacturing represent a historic opportunity. But to seize it, we must have the energy to power it. The servers processing complex algorithms and the factories forging new products all depend on a simple input: energy that is always powered on.
Jason Hayes is the director of Energy & Environment at America First Policy Institute.
