Does Trump Love Nuclear? Sometimes
The president-elect has taken both sides, but his tax cuts may be the final word on subsidies for the industry.
Trump's tax cuts could make nuclear fizzle.
Photographer: Heather Khalifa/Bloomberg
Having “Trump” and “nuclear” in the same sentence can induce anxiety (it once did in his nominee for secretary of state, anyway). Extend that to “nuclear power,” however, and it’s a different story. Shares of reactor owners and developers responded favorably to news of President-elect Donald Trump’s win. Nuclear energy is having a moment anyway, with Big Tech signaling support for reactors to power their datacenters mastering artificial intelligence. The technology also enjoys rare bipartisan support, with the outgoing administration of President Joe Biden having just unveiled a roadmap to triple the country’s nuclear capacity by 2050. And Trump himself has said “Nuclear now has become very good, very safe.”
But that was three months ago. About three weeks ago, Trump complained to podcaster Joe Rogan that nuclear projects in the US have been “too complex and too expensive” and expressed misgivings about safety and proliferation. Nuclear advocates may dismiss this as mere foible: Who knows what this most mercurial of figures will think about nuclear power come January or even 24 hours from now? It’s a reasonable point. But the dissonance extends to Trump’s broader policy platform, with perhaps more consequences for nuclear support.