DOE’s Advanced Nuclear Reactor Site 90-Day Challenge

U.S. president Donald Trump issued a suite of directives in May aimed at hastening the development of advanced nuclear reactors. The directives, delivered via a set of four executive orders, set ambitious goals, such as having 10 new large reactors under construction by 2030, and overhauling the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

One particularly eager provision instructs the U.S. Department of Energy to designate, within 90 days, at least one site on DOE-controlled land for the deployment of an advanced nuclear reactor—a nearly impossible deadline that’s coming up August 21.

The orders sparked a flurry of discussion across the nuclear industry and sent stakeholders scrambling. Experts weighed the promise of accelerated nuclear deployments against the potential of losing regulatory integrity. Whether the U.S. government, military, and industry stakeholders can meet the demands of the directives and timelines is unclear.

As someone with deep expertise in nuclear project development and licensing, I’ve chosen to focus this article on the 90-day site-selection directive—perhaps the first litmus test to see if the Trump administration will execute on its challenging deadlines.

The process for selecting a site for a new nuclear plant in the United States is an arduous and complex process that blends engineering feasibility, environmental science, safety, emergency planning, economics, and public trust, all while complying with regulations and guidance. It’s never been done in 90 days, at least not with regulatory approval.

But there might be one way for the DOE to meet that deadline: Rely on sites that are already deeply prepared with existing documentation and few unknowns. There are two locations in the United States that come close to fitting this category: Idaho National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

How to Pick a Site for an Advanced Nuclear Reactor

To host a commercial nuclear reactor in the United States, a site must first receive a license from the NRC. To get that license, reactor owners typically take a couple of years to prepare the application, 6 to 12 months of which is needed to perform and document the site-selection process. The regulator then reviews the application and performs an environmental impact statement (EIS)—a process that historically took more than two years, but is now required to be completed in 18 months, per new directives.

The first step in selecting a site is to identify the region of interest. Next, unsuitable or problematic parts of that region, such as those that are prone to earthquakes, flooding, or landslides, are eliminated.

Remaining areas of land in the region are then assessed for technical and environmental suitability. For a small modular reactor (SMR), a type of advanced nuclear reactor, an ideal site size is a couple of hundred acres (about 80 hectares), while a thousand acres (over 400 ha) is ideal for a large nuclear plant. Reactors also need sufficient cooling water, which typically comes from a nearby ocean, lake, river, or aquafer.

RELATED: U.S. Pushes $900 Million for Small Modular Reactor

Developers must assess the nearby population and infrastructure, search for endangered species, and assess wetlands. Business factors are also considered, such as distance to interconnection with transmission, cost to install and operate cooling, and the amount of site grading needed.

Finally, applicants assign weighting values to the criteria and rate sites against the various parameters. This iterative process, followed by further field investigations and narrowing of options, leads to the selection of one preferred site, with two to four others defined as alternatives. After that, the NRC reviews the application and proceeds with the environmental impact statement process.

DOE’s Looming Site-Selection Deadline

It’s unclear how far along the DOE is in its attempt to comply with the executive order’s 90-day challenge to pick a site for a nuclear plant. Meeting the deadline will require creative thinking and decisive action.

With that in mind, the best path forward for the DOE is to focus on sites that have already undergone National Environmental Policy Act review and some NRC licensing. The DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL) in Idaho Falls, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee, both meet those criteria.

Near INL, there are two options: the site where NuScale Power and Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems were pursuing an NRC license for an SMR facility before abandoning the project in November 2023, and the site proposed for the Eagle Rock uranium enrichment facility that received a license in 2011 but was not constructed.

INL has hosted 52 reactors since 1949, so it’s likely a suitable place from an environmental and safety perspective. Although both the NuScale and Eagle Rock sites meet the intent of the executive order, neither received an environmental impact statement from the NRC for a new nuclear reactor. Further, the Eagle Rock site is adjacent to INL, not on its site.

Perhaps the ideal choice is the 935-acre (378-ha) parcel of land on a peninsula on the Clinch River in Tennessee, adjacent to ORNL. The site is federally owned, currently controlled by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and is the only site in the United States that has received a green light—an early site permit from the NRC—for SMRs.

The Clinch River site was partially developed in the 1970s for the Clinch River Breeder Reactor project, a liquid-metal fast breeder reactor that was abandoned in the early 1980s. The NRC in 2019 licensed the site to TVA for the construction and operation of two or more SMRs. This permit allows for up to 800 megawatts electric (MWe) of nuclear power and followed a thorough environmental and safety review that remains valid through 2039.

A small modular reactor called the BWRX-300, developed by GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy, is planned for the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Clinch River site.TVA

In May this year, TVA requested a construction permit to build on that site an SMR called the BWRX-300, a boiling-water reactor, which would have a capacity of 300 MWe. But the site can accommodate additional SMRs and other advanced or microreactor units, which would fulfill the executive order’s objectives.

Clinch River Is Ideal for New Nuclear

TVA was prescient in its thinking: Its stated objectives for the Clinch River site include powering mission-critical electricity loads for national defense, which aligns with the executive order’s priorities. In fact, TVA’s 2016 application assessed underground transmission lines to serve mission-critical loads on ORNL—a design feature that makes it less susceptible to intentional destructive acts and natural phenomena such as tornadoes.

The area already hosts the DOE’s largest electricity user, the Oak Ridge Reservation, which includes ORNL and the Y-12 National Security Complex, where nuclear-weapons components are manufactured and highly enriched uranium is stored and processed. Historically, the region supported the K-25 uranium-enrichment facility, which consumed, until the 1980s, more than 1,000 MWe. Today, the robust power infrastructure built to serve K-25 remains available in Oak Ridge, including redundant 161- and 500-kilovolt transmission lines that transect the Clinch River site.

East Tennessee is also home to one of the nation’s deepest and most experienced nuclear workforces, with TVA, DOE, the University of Tennessee, and many private-sector nuclear companies including Centrus Energy, Kairos Power, LIS Technologies, Nano Nuclear Energy, Orano, Standard Nuclear, Type One Energy, and X-Energy, plus numerous smaller suppliers, all calling Oak Ridge home.

TVA has not, thus far, catered to data centers—one of the Trump administration’s priorities. But on 24 July the DOE named the Oak Ridge Reservation one of four locations where it will invite private-sector partners to develop cutting-edge AI data-center and energy-generation projects. An adjacent advanced-nuclear plant on the Clinch River site would pair nicely.

TVA’s New Nuclear Constraints

This rare combination of attributes simply doesn’t exist elsewhere, and makes the Clinch River site the ideal location to try to meet the provisions in the executive orders. But several challenges lie ahead.

TVA’s status as a federally owned corporation comes with constraints that impede progress. Namely, a US $30 billion cap on the amount of debt it can take on was bestowed upon it through the TVA Act and hasn’t been increased since 1979. TVA has been accused of moving too slowly in the development of advanced nuclear and SMRs, and Tennessee senators and the president have called for leadership change at the power provider.

Successful execution of the directive will require leadership within the Trump administration. It will require TVA to seek creative solutions and overcome its constraints. One option would be to transfer the Clinch River site and its permit from TVA to the DOE. Or perhaps the simplest solution is for the DOE to contract for power in a manner that enables third-party financing of new nuclear capacity, so that the debt doesn’t fall on TVA’s balance sheet.

Given the urgency, importance, and magnitude of the challenge of meeting the United States’ growing electricity needs and to accomplish the intent of the executive orders, DOE should designate both INL and ORNL as locations to host new nuclear reactors.