Leaders in our region are responding to the Trump administration’s ambitions to dramatically increase nuclear energy development.
And those ambitions are measured in hundreds of gigawatts: specifically, officials would like to quadruple capacity to 400 gigawatts by 2050. That’s one of a number of goals and measures laid out in four executive orders signed in May.
“The country is really looking to the West right now for energy super abundance,” said Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, speaking at a Western Governors Association meeting in Idaho Falls this week.
He and other state and federal officials attended a groundbreaking ceremony for a nuclear reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory, built by the company Oklo. Cox noted the strangeness of his being outside his own state for it.
“But I was so grateful because this is what an abundance mentality is all about,” he said. “It's not Utah versus Idaho versus Wyoming. We're going to be much stronger if we're working together because we have some differences that are important and some similarities that are important.”
Idaho Gov. Brad Little also signed an executive order creating the Advanced Nuclear Energy Task Force. He said energy demand is increasing rapidly, driven in part by the rapid growth of data centers.
“We cannot do that with our legacy energy,” Little said. “We are going to have to have scalable, safe nuclear energy.”
“We are uniquely positioned here in Idaho,” he added. “We are the home of the nation's flagship nuclear research facility and a global leader in innovation. We are home to universities and utilities that are actively exploring new opportunities. We're the home of a highly skilled workforce.”
The new task force, which replaces the state’s previous Leadership in Nuclear Energy Commission, is intended to “piggyback” off of Trump’s executive orders.
But some are concerned about the aggressive nuclear energy push.
Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists, said the effort is an attempt to see if deregulation can spur private investment.
“Unfortunately, the public in the U.S. may be the subjects of an experiment in deregulating nuclear power,” he said. “And see if that can actually occur safely and securely.”
He also noted that the country still doesn’t have a long-term solution for waste disposal.
“Any state that's going to be building new nuclear power plants is going to have to face the fact that they will be storing that waste indefinitely,” he added.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Boise State Public Radio, Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio and KJZZ in Arizona as well as NPR, with support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
