Governors Display Bipartisan Support For Nuclear Energy

Some of the largest companies on the planet have been generating headlines in the final weeks and months of 2024 for their efforts to scale up nuclear energy production. On October 14, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced that the company, the world’s fourth largest by market cap, had “signed a pioneering agreement to purchase clean energy in the US from Kairos Power, a leader in building small modular nuclear reactors,” which Pichai described as Google’s “latest step in our history of accelerating clean energy sources and will help support AI investments.”

Two days after Google broke the news of its agreement with Kairos Power, Amazon, which has the fifth largest market cap on the planet, announced it will invest half a billion dollars in X-energy, a leader in the advanced nuclear reactor and fuel technology space. With its investment in X-energy, Amazon said in a statement that the company aims “to bring more than 5 gigawatts online in the United States by 2039, the largest commercial deployment target of small modular reactors (SMRs) to date.”

Ongoing efforts to expand nuclear energy development are not limited to the private sector. In fact, governors from both red and blue states have taken steps in recent months and years to make nuclear energy production more cost-effective and economically viable.

In Tennessee, for example, Governor Bill Lee’s (R) administration has pursued a series of reforms that promote nuclear energy development and technological innovation in the Volunteer State. In addition to reducing the state tax burden for businesses, Governor Lee has worked with lawmakers to accelerate permitting processes and remove other bureaucratic impediments to development. When the federal tax deduction for research and development costs went away in 2022, Governor Lee and lawmakers stepped in to make Tennessee the first state to reinstate full expensing of R&D costs for state tax purposes.

In a May 2023 executive order, Governor Lee created the Tennessee Nuclear Energy Advisory Council, which was tasked with advising on “legislative, policy and budgetary changes to address regulatory, workforce or education barriers that exist to the creation and expansion of nuclear energy facilities in Tennessee.” The Council issued the final report listing its recommendations at the end of October. The council’s report to Governor Lee and state legislators noted the competition Tennessee is facing to become a hub for nuclear energy development and innovation:

“There are many states attempting to support deployment of small modular reactors. Governor Mark Gordon in Wyoming is advocating for TerraPower’s Natrium reactor to be built in Kemmerer; through the leadership of Governor Greg Abbott, Texas is investigating the potential of small nuclear reactors by working with Dow and X-energy; and Governor Glenn Youngkin and Dominion Energy recently announce a request for proposal for developing and constructing an advanced small modular reactor in Virginia. South Carolina is considering a reboot/completion approach for the VC Summer nuclear unties that stopped construction in 2017.”

There is evidence that Governor Lee’s efforts are paying dividends. In announcing the aforementioned agreement with Kairos Power, Google pointed out that earlier this year the company “broke ground on its Hermes non-powered demonstration reactor in Tennessee, the first U.S. advanced reactor project to receive a construction permit from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.” That demonstration is but one of “a number of projects have been announced which are clear examples of expanding Tennessee’s role in the nuclear sector,” said Steve Jones, a member of the Tennessee Nuclear Energy Advisory Council.

“Gov. Bill Lee recently unveiled the Orano uranium enrichment project in Oak Ridge,” Jones added, noting that the Orono project, “coupled with a TVA/GE Hitachi partnership in Roane County, could be the first SMR in the nation to provide power to the grid.”

Shapiro, Whitmer, and Newsom Demonstrate Bipartisan Support For Nuclear Energy

Governor Lee probably doesn’t agree with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) on most policy issues. One exception, however, is that both Whitmer and Lee are taking steps to increase nuclear energy production.

Two years ago Governor Whitmer announced her support for keeping the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station open. Despite the fact that the nuclear plant was already slated to close the month after she made that statement, Whitmer’s declared support prompted Holtec Decommissioning International, the nuclear plant’s new owner, to take steps toward restarting the reactor, including securing a new buyer for the energy produced by the plant and applying for federal subsidies.

“Restarting Palisades means the return of a reliable and dispatchable source of zero-carbon baseload electricity, capable of helping Michigan meet its clean energy needs year-round without interruption,” said American Nuclear Society CEO Craig Piercy. Whitmer’s support for restarting nuclear energy generation was criticized by members of her own party and praised by political opponents.

Michigan Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt (R) said he is “happy to see the governor and her peers acknowledging the need to reopen this vital nuclear power plant as we all brace for the predictable shortfalls of the extreme energy agenda forced through the Legislature by the Democrat majority last year.”

“Whitmer seems to have embraced nuclear energy to compensate for the shortfalls of wind and solar energy and her own zero-emission policies and efforts to permanently close the dual five-mile Line 5 pipelines spanning the Lake Michigan floor between Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas,” noted a September 12 blog post by the Badger Institute, a free market think tank based in Milwaukee. That blog post, authored by Bruce Edward Walker, called Whitmer’s move “a remarkable atomic about-face that may hold lessons for Wisconsin.”

Whitmer isn’t the only Democratic governor promoting nuclear energy. California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) supports the December 2023 decision by Golden State energy officials to keep the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in operation five years beyond the initial 2025 decommission date. In Pennsylvania, meanwhile, Governor Josh Shapiro (D) is requesting an expedited regulatory approval process for the resumption of nuclear energy production at the Three Mile Island plant.

Back in September, on the five year anniversary of Three Mile Island’s 2019 closure, Microsoft and Constellation Energy declared a partnership to resume operations at the plant. Microsoft and Constellation’s agreement, which has a duration of two decades, will help Microsoft, the world’s third largest company by market cap, meet its growing energy needs, which have ballooned as a result of the company’s AI-related ventures. Governor Shapiro’s September request for Three Mile Island to move to the front of the regulatory queue stressed the need for “rapid entry of projects that can quickly begin adding capacity to the grid.”

“Shapiro’s urgency is understandable,” Andrè Bèliveau, senior manager of energy policy at the Commonwealth Foundation, wrote in a December 24 article in Reason. “In addition to adding reliable energy, project developers estimate that Three Mile Island will create 3,400 jobs (many of which pay 45% more than the state’s median salary), $3 billion in state and federal taxes, and a $16 billion boon to Pennsylvania’s GDP.”

Bèliveau makes the case that expanding capacity for nuclear energy production, which faces a relatively onerous regulatory burden in the U.S., is key to meeting the growing energy needs driven by new technologies. “Our grids will need an additional capacity of at least 18 gigawatts (GWs) to service AI’s data centers by 2030,” Bèliveau writes, adding that “New York City’s grid is about 6 GW annually, so the grid needs about three Big Apples’ worth of capacity to satiate AI’s energy needs.”

“Intermittent sources, such as wind and solar, cannot meet that need,” Bèliveau pointed out, noting that such sources are also “costly to build for the small amounts of megawatt hour they provide, and the landmass needed to have a capacity comparable to nuclear is extensive.”

Bèliveau notes that the average U.S. nuclear plant faces $60 million in annual compliance costs. He and others contend that taming this regulatory burden will help attract the increased investment that is needed to expand U.S. nuclear energy production capacity.

“The global median construction time ranges from 7.5 to 11 years, depending on the sample size. The average construction time in Germany, France, and Russia is about 80 months (nearly 7 years); in Japan, it is about 60 months (about 5 years),” Bèliveau writes about the comparative timelines for bringing new nuclear capacity online. “When factoring in both permitting and construction, the final completion of American nuclear plants can surpass 20 years. Considering the time and cost, it’s no wonder so many investors are too spooked to jump into the new nuclear game.”

The two most recent nuclear plants to come online in the U.S., located near Waynesboro, Georgia, began commercial operations in May 2024 and July 2023. The new Georgia reactors were initially projected to cost $14 billion but ended up totaling $35 billion. While over budget, the Georgia reactors are at least operational. The same can’t be said of the new reactors that were under construction at South Carolina’s VC Summer nuclear plant. After $9 billion had already been spent on the project, those new reactors were abandoned in 2017 in the aftermath of a scandal that led to the imprisonment of two utility company executives.

A September article in Real Clear Energy contended that there has “been talk – but not much action – on streamlining regulations and reforming federal laws to make American nuclear power price competitive with that in other countries.” The Tennessee Nuclear Energy Advisory Council’s Steve Jones, however, points to recent reforms that can be built upon.

“In a bipartisan effort,” Jones noted in his September Chattanooga Times-Free Press op-ed, “Congress recently passed — and President Biden signed into law — the Fire Grants and Safety Act. This bill included critical nuclear permitting reform legislation known as the Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act.” Jones says that reform “will help usher in several sweeping changes at the regulatory level aimed at growing America’s nuclear capabilities,” by streamlining and simplifying “the currently onerous permitting and licensing process for advanced nuclear reactors.”

No new nuclear power plants are under construction in the U.S. at the moment. Federal and state officials can help change that by enacting reforms to create regulatory and tax climates that are more favorable to development and energy production. Recent actions by governors and lawmakers from across the country, in both blue and red states, demonstrate there is bipartisan support for increased nuclear energy production in the U.S.