A MAGA might say that President Trump has raised the dead—the U.S. nuclear energy industry. Led by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, the Trump administration has jump-started development of micro and small modular reactors, authorized 10 new nuclear power plants, extended the lifecycles of older plants, reenergized uranium mining and processing, and promoted domestic production of nuclear fuel.
And now, the Trump team has come up with one of the most innovative ideas ever introduced into the nuclear energy universe – the “nuclear lifestyle innovation campus.” On July 28, Wright signed MOUs with five states to continue exploring hosting campuses that would include disposal of nuclear waste, uranium enrichment, spent-fuel reprocessing, and fuel fabrication. They may also host advanced reactor deployment, power generation, and data centers.
According to Wright, Idaho, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Utah were chosen from 28 applicants in 26 states. Wright envisions these campuses as “massive generators of economic growth [that will] create thousands of high-paying jobs and be crucial to unleashing America’s nuclear renaissance.”
Seven decades of operating light-water nuclear reactors at every U.S. nuclear power plant, in which only three percent of the fissile material is used to generate electricity, has left almost 100,000 metric tons of spent nuclear power plant fuel. Until recently, the spent fuel has been marked for permanent disposal.
Now there are calls – and new technologies – for restarting the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. Nuclear advocate Steven Curtis says that today’s fast reactors, including molten salt reactors, can be designed to burn most of the remaining 95 percent of what he calls “slightly used nuclear fuel” – reprocessed spent nuclear fuel. Canada’s growing fleet of CANDU reactors can also use spent nuclear fuel.
The integrated nuclear campus idea is an outside-the-box solution to the nation’s longstanding problem with nuclear waste disposal. Four decades after Congress first designated Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the nation’s underground nuclear waste repository, there is no waste deposited at Yucca Mountain – thanks to effective fear mongering by anti-nuclear activists.
The proposed campuses would receive shipments of spent nuclear fuel, separate out any remaining plutonium, reprocess and enrich the reprocessed uranium, and forge it into nuclear fuel for American reactors. Siting new reactors and nuclear-powered data centers nearby would cut shipping costs and risks and further aid creation of a skilled nuclear industry workforce.
All of these are elements of President Trump’s mandate to bring about a renaissance for an industry born in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which already has a fast-growing nuclear campus. Typical of a Trumpian “deal,” the campuses have the potential to attract up to $50 billion in capital investment, generate as much as $10 billion in state and local tax revenue, and create nearly 25,000 new jobs at each campus, according to the DOE.
Idaho is already home to the Idaho National Laboratory, which was created in 1949 and has been at the forefront of nuclear energy innovation and testing ever since. Tennessee, since the Manhattan Project, has been a nuclear energy leader.
Utah, through Operation Gigawatt, has already been developing the entire nuclear lifecycle from fuel production through advanced reactor deployment. Louisiana has long been a major energy state, has long had two operating nuclear power plants, and is eager to expand its nuclear footprint. Oklahoma, like Louisiana, is known as an energy state that wants to add nuclear.
The key to these campuses is that they will not just be repositories but rather reprocessors of nuclear waste – which has always been legal in the U.S. Curtis says if the U.S. went all in on nuclear fuel recycling, the cost of nuclear-generated electricity could fall dramatically. Most of the material that has for decades been called “waste” would be used to generate electricity, leaving a much smaller amount – with a much shorter half-life – to be disposed of permanently.
There is, of course, continuing opposition to nuclear fuel recycling – or any use of nuclear energy. But major corporations that formerly could be swayed by anti-nuclear activists are now hungry for electricity, and even the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is working to revamp its regulations to accommodate new reactors and other new technologies – and cut permitting times.
For decades, until 1994, the Argonne National Laboratory operated a 20-MWe advanced reactor (yes, the technology is that old!) using recycled (reprocessed) nuclear fuel that relied on pyroprocessing – in which spent fuel rods are chopped into pieces, crumbled into a powder, and dissolved in a molten salt bath, to which electric current is applied to separate out uranium.
Today, Global Laser Enrichment (GLE), which a year ago completed a demonstration pilot for its laser enrichment technology, is currently seeking an NRC license for a proposed new facility at a decommissioned enrichment facility outside Paducah, Kentucky, even as it is putting together a second demonstration at the North Carolina facility that processed several hundred kilograms of uranium in 2025. GLE hopes to have the Paducah plant operational by 2030.
Laser enrichment is an alternative to using centrifuges to enrich uranium. It takes advantage of the fact that all molecules vibrate and rotate at an atomic scale in ways that depend on their specific configuration. Each uranium isotope has a distinct footprint. Lasers are so precise they can target U-235 molecules and selectively excite them, making it easier to separate out using chemical or physical methods.
Whether these proposed campuses become Silicon Valley-type innovation hubs – and create a domestic supply chain for nuclear power plants—remains to be seen. But the prospect of a nuclear energy revival would be great news to those who once believed in President Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace proposal – and for an energy-hungry nation.