The Department of Energy (DOE) announced Tuesday it will loan up to $17.5 billion to strengthen the American nuclear supply chain and accelerate the deployment of 10 new large-scale reactors that could together power about 10 million American households.
Though nuclear is an extremely reliable energy source and public sentiment has warmed to it in recent years, developers must procure an enormous amount of capital to finance new reactors. The DOE said Tuesday the loans will support “long-lead time items,” or large equipment that is often in limited supply, at a fixed price.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright told reporters on Tuesday that to fulfill President Donald Trump’s executive order on quadrupling nuclear power in the U.S. by 2050, “we need to use all technologies, and we critically need to build more large reactors again.”
“Just over one year ago, President Trump directed the Energy Department and its agency partners to unleash the next American nuclear renaissance,” Wright said. “To accomplish that mission, these conditional loans will play an important role in reviving the supply chain needed for America to once again build large-scale commercial reactors.”
Westinghouse’s AP1000 units are the only licensed large-scale commercial reactors operating in the U.S. today. The units are capital- and time-intensive, though the DOE said the loans will help lower construction costs and accelerate deployment by up to three years.
The design was first built at Georgia’s Plant Vogtle, though the project ran into significant construction delays and cost overruns.
“The way to drive down cost of nuclear is to standardize and repeat build of the same design,” Greg Beard, director of DOE’s Energy Dominance Financing office, told reporters.
One study completed in March by PricewaterhouseCoopers for Westinghouse found that 10 AP1000 units would support $92.8 billion in GDP and over 44,000 U.S. jobs.
The initiative would loan the funds to five special purpose vehicles that would support two reactors on each site. Westinghouse would be a partner for each vehicle, and the other partners will be announced later after agreements are finalized.
Unlocking the full loan amount requires Westinghouse and each partner to commit $1 billion total per project upfront.
“These are not direct loans to Westinghouse. These are loans used to get a supply chain going, so we can build these reactors faster and quickly, and they will be at multiple locations around the country,” Wright said.
Wright noted that if there is continued interest, it’s possible the program could expand beyond its initial five vehicles.
Seven parties, including utilities and energy companies, expressed interest in participating in the program, Beard told reporters, adding that final selections will be determined by which entities can build the reactors “most efficiently, most successfully, and most quickly.”
American energy demand is rising with the expansion of artificial intelligence, onshore manufacturing and electrification. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s 2025 long-term reliability assessment found that at least five regions across the U.S. will face high grid reliability risks by 2030.
Emmet Penney, a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation (FAI), wrote that Westinghouse’s AP1000 is the only design that could meet the criteria of Trump’s executive order calling for 10 more nuclear reactors to be under construction by 2030.
Penney argued in a November 2025 FAI report that America’s grid crisis has hastened its need for nuclear power.
“The American power grid faces dual crises. Over recent decades, it has become increasingly fragile because of deferred maintenance, aging infrastructure, and vulnerability to extreme weather events. Now it also faces surging demand from reindustrialization, electrification, and artificial intelligence,” Penney wrote. “In this context, nuclear power has become more essential than ever. … Nuclear power plants are uniquely robust infrastructure projects that promote human flourishing long into the future.”
