These nuclear reactors can benefit Idaho, power America’s ambitions | Opinion

America’s most pressing ambitions — re-industrialization, artificial intelligence leadership, cleaner energy and thriving small businesses — are colliding with a hard reality: The nation lacks the power and energy grid infrastructure required to deliver them.

To compound the issue, local communities often oppose new data centers because, among other reasons, consumers fear that their own energy bills may rise. Nevertheless, by supporting new technologies, including a new generation of small modular reactors, or SMRs, policymakers can address America’s power needs in ways that benefit consumers.

During his State of the Union address, President Trump announced a “new Rate Payer Protection Pledge” to ensure that the tech companies, rather than consumers, bear the costs of new data centers.

The pledge builds on an earlier bipartisan plan that encourages technology companies to build their own power plants. Google, Meta, Microsoft, xAI, Oracle, OpenAI, and Amazon signed the pledge in early March to “BYOP” — Bring Your Own Power — to the data center party.

As part of a comprehensive energy strategy, SMRs offer a practical path to expanding power capacity, pairing reliable power with comfortable safety margins.

SMRs are compact, standardized nuclear plants built with factory-produced components that reduce construction time, lower costs and improve safety compared with traditional large-scale reactors. Unlike conventional nuclear plants that require massive, decade-long construction projects, SMRs can be prefabricated and deployed incrementally, making them ideally suited to today’s energy, AI and grid demands.

Idaho’s role in SMR development

SMRs’ potential provides another reason to watch the Idaho National Laboratory and its National Reactor Innovation Center. Last May, the White House issued four executive orders that significantly expanded the Department of Energy’s authority to regulate new advanced reactors and could encompass a prototype reactor for powering a data center. One of these Orders directs DOE to approve at least three new reactors. DOE subsequently accepted 11 applicants into its reactor pilot program.

In fact, the need for data centers to provide their own power is a problem tailor-made for the NRIC, whose mission is to “bridge the gap between concept, demonstration, and commercialization of advanced nuclear technology.”

NRIC recently announced its Nuclear Energy Launch Pad in response to this high private sector interest. The Launch Pad initiative is the new vehicle to test and operate these trailblazing technologies in partnership with private nuclear technology developers, with an eye toward eventual commercial deployment and proof of DOE’s plans to expand the private sector’s ability to obtain DOE Authorization.

In conjunction with the Launch Pad, the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should continue to pursue regulatory reforms that could significantly speed the growth of all nuclear power, including SMRs. One of the recent executive orders directed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to modernize its regulations. Proposed revised regulations, which should prioritize safety, speed, and cost, are expected soon.

But compared to regulatory reform, the DOE’s new process, of which the Launch Pad is a part, is designed for speed, allowing for safe operation of a pilot reactor within two years of a licensing application. DOE’s new model has built-in safety guardrails, commercial insurance options and federal indemnification in the unlikely event of an accident.

Because SMRs are smaller, modular and capable of standardization, they fit naturally within DOE’s faster pilot framework, something for which traditional large-scale reactors were never designed. SMRs’ simpler designs, lower power output and lower operating pressure increase safety margins when compared with traditional nuclear plants. These reactors can operate for many years without the need for refueling, lowering maintenance costs. Because safety is always a concern with any nuclear technology, new SMRs will need a robust safety analysis to prove their concept. Even so, SMR technology is likely up to the challenge.

Moreover, under last fall’s memorandum of understanding, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will establish an expedited licensure pathway for DOE-approved reactor designs. This memorandum will ease the process for licensure for reactors developed under DOE supervision, a significant reform as commercial usage requires NRC licensure. Ultimately, the DOE process will enable private reactors to make the technology profitable.

China pulls ahead in AI supremacy

Beyond our domestic needs, SMRs can help the U.S. keep pace with our foreign rivals.

As China continues to pull ahead in many drivers of AI supremacy, the U.S. desperately needs to expand its energy infrastructure to keep pace. In fact, the U.S. will need 25% more electricity by 2030 and 78% more by 2050. We are not prepared to meet this demand. Following decades of underinvestment in both generation and transmission lines, the American Society of Civil Engineers grades our energy infrastructure as a D+ while the Department of Energy warns of a 100-fold increase in power outages by 2030. The smartest chips on Earth will be useless in the dark.

In sharp contrast, China has largely solved its AI energy needs. Between 2010 and 2024, China increased its energy production by more than the rest of the world combined. China already generates twice as much power as the U.S. and is investing $300 billion more than the U.S. in energy in 2025, putting it on pace to add 60% more energy capacity by 2040. Moreover, China reports that its modern grid efficiently moves energy around the country.

To address this gap, the U.S. needs an all-of-the-above solution, in which nuclear power must play an integral role. President Trump wants a “nuclear renaissance,” and the Biden administration called for the U.S. “to at least triple our current nuclear capacity.” But the U.S. has built only three new reactors this century, whereas China is building dozens of large scale reactors, albeit with safety concerns, at one-seventh of the price of U.S. plants.

As AI’s energy demands rise, SMRs could help technology companies bring their own power to the electrical grid. Nuclear power has the potential to be a force multiplier in American energy supply, as it has been with China and Russia. And INL could be at the center of developing reasonable options to encourage safe and speedy innovation, bringing modern nuclear technologies to the electrical grid.

Mary Anne Zivnuska is an alumna of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program. Asheesh Agarwal is an alumnus of the first Trump Administration.