Trump Energy Department Hits Its Target On Small Nuclear Reactors. Now Comes The Hard Part.

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.

“The fact that they can do this and do this so quickly, it shows that the preconceived notions we’ve had about nuclear are no longer valid anymore,” said Michael Goff, principal deputy assistant secretary of DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, of the smaller reactors in an interview. “Nuclear doesn’t have to take a long time if we have the right enabling environment to move forward. Nuclear can move forward fairly rapidly.”

The administration has set a goal of quadrupling the nation’s existing net nuclear power capacity to 400 gigawatts by 2050, an ambitious target for an industry that has seen only a handful of new reactors enter into service in the past three decades as public opinion on the technology soured.

But the successful start of two large new reactors in Georgia, support from both political parties and the spiking electricity costs that power experts fear could accelerate with the build-out of data centers to power artificial intelligence have all contributed to the effort to revive the technology.

Deployable's achievement matched the milestone reached in June by reactors developed by Torrance, California-based startup Antares and El Segundo, California-based Valar Atomics.

DOE provided access to its laboratories for Antares’ and Deployable’s reactors. The department also approved safety analyses and final authorization for these demonstration reactors to go critical.

Bobby Gallagher, CEO and co-founder of Deployable, said meeting the criticality benchmark wouldn’t have been possible “without the firm dedication of the DOE for safety, quality and speed” or without support from Idaho National Laboratory staff.

A fourth reactor built by Austin-based Aalo Atomics is also expected to reach criticality before July 4, the company’s CEO Matt Loszak told POLITICO.

Aalo’s reactor is part of a reactor pilot program launched by DOE last year, whereas Deployable’s is part of a different department program that launched in March. Both programs are centered around getting advanced nuclear reactors closer to commercialization.

Though there are currently no microreactors or small modular reactors in commercial use in the United States, the technologies have been seen as a potential power source by some data center developers as electricity demand climbs.

The Energy Department has eliminated much of the red tape that critics say long slowed the development of these technologies for demonstration purposes.

But the power to grant commercial licenses still rests with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is seeing an overhaul prompted by a White House directive last year and the bipartisan ADVANCE Act that passed in 2024 to push the agency to streamline reviews of reactor designs.

"Certainly, the criticality milestones are important, just from a technology perspective, from a demonstration perspective, but we would not take those milestones being met as an indication that commercialization is near,” said Emily Tucker, vice president of the advisory firm Capstone’s energy team.

Goff and department officials, including Energy Secretary Chris Wright, have said that NRC staff have been present throughout the process of getting the new reactors to go critical. Goff said he’s hoping the NRC’s participation could lead to an “accelerated process” for licensing.

A proposed rule that would give advanced reactors a quicker path to NRC approval if they’ve already been reviewed by DOE or the Defense Department could potentially accelerate commercialization, he added.

And despite the skepticism of some in the industry, Goff said he’s bullish that advanced reactors will start to have an impact on the U.S. energy mix this decade.

"I know there are a number of companies that are in the pilot program that are already in discussions on data centers, and I expect in the very near future them to start making some announcements of, 'This technology is going to deploy a data center for this company,’” Goff said.

"I think it'll be just a matter of a few years,” he added.

Gallagher said his company is likely to apply for a commercial license for its reactor later this year after a new rule for microreactor licensing is finalized. From there, he expects the NRC’s review process to take six to 12 months.

Though the Energy Department’s processes to get smaller reactors to criticality may give the NRC information to speed up potential licensing, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that energy from these technologies will be added to the electrical grid or power data centers any time soon.

“The pilot program itself is for demonstration reactors. It is not for commercial power to the grid,” said Alison Hahn, the former head of advanced reactors at the Energy Department and current a senior director at the industry group Nuclear Energy Institute. “However, it does move the needle technically and in terms of the supply chain, it does move the industry forward.”

For commercial deployment to become a reality for smaller reactors, the developers will first have to overcome a number of challenges.

For starters, some of the reactors will require high-assay low-enriched uranium as a fuel source — which is in short supply. Currently there is no commercial source of HALEU in the U.S.

And though data center developers are hoping that smaller reactors will help power their energy-gobbling facilities, some of these smaller units on their own may not be powerful enough to do so, according to James Richards, manager of economics and project development at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance.

“It’ll be incumbent on these companies to really take what they’ve learned and actually kind of apply that in a scaled-up production,” he said. “That’s not a given. That’s still a very difficult task.”

Others pointed to a key hurdle to widespread deployment of the new technology: financing.

Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists, said that without providing federal dollars for the new reactors, DOE’s pilot program was a “performative exercise.”

“The program doesn’t actually come with any financing for these projects, and that is probably the number one obstacle to reactor deployment — the lack of sufficient financing for the multibillion-dollar capital costs of even a small reactor,” Lyman said.

Companies that took part of DOE’s reactor pilot program have had to fundraise on their own. Deployable did not receive federal dollars for its reactor either.

The administration has drawn some criticism as well for its focus on reaching criticality.

The center-left nonprofit Third Way has called the department’s focus on its reactor pilot program “an unhelpful diversion” from the administration’s broader nuclear ambitions, which recently included more than $17 billion in loans to help develop large reactors. Third Way said that while criticality “provides useful data on newer fuel and reactor designs,” it’s not a “commercial breakthrough.”

DOE’s Goff, however, called reaching criticality the “first step” and said the department, depending on the project, can stay involved in some capacity as a demonstration reactor works toward commercialization.

“We’ve got to go beyond criticality,” he said. “If we were just focused on criticality, I think it might just be misplaced.”