All in a Year's Work for Nuclear—And There's More to Come

Of all of the years, 2025 was one of them. Everything happened so fast that I am still writing “2024” on things when I date them.  I’m simply going to mention that Wicked: For Good came out just a year after Wicked did and then talk about all the amazing things that happened in the world of nuclear energy and what we are looking forward to in 2026.  

What Happened in 2025?

• Executive Orders stole the show. While a lot did happen this past year, one of the most notable may have been the slew of Executive Orders that the president signed focusing on nuclear. The orders were designed to revitalize U.S. nuclear leadership globally and work to modernize the NRC. I could go into WAY more detail, but there just isn’t space in this blog. Luckily, we talked about it in June.  
• Nuclear Tax Credits. After much uncertainty, the House and Senate passed a budget reconciliation package that maintained tax credits for nuclear power. The continuation of the tax credits, which were introduced under the Biden Administration, is a testament to nuclear’s bipartisan support.  
• Nuclear Makes it Happen (Nuclear Made it Happen?). NEI launched a new brand campaign that encourages us to reflect on how nuclear energy plays a role in our everyday activities and future aspirations. Nuclear Makes It Happen urges people to think about nuclear energy as an active part of their daily lives. 
• NEI provided suggestions for NRC modernization. Last summer, NEI put together specific recommendations for the most impactful reforms needed to enable the NRC to meet the urgent national demand for more safe, reliable nuclear power. 
• Nuclear Works went live. As we’ve known for a while, nuclear energy creates plenty of well-paying jobs...and we will need a lot more people working in the industry soon. These jobs range from chemical engineers to human resources generalists to security guards. In 2025, Nuclear Works was launched to help folks find those jobs and bring more talent into the industry. 
• Plants got a boost with their plans to restart. Nothing has quite embodied the resurgence of nuclear energy like the restarting of plants. In 2025, the plants at Palisades, Duane Arnold, and Three Mile Island all made major strides to move forward with restarting. We’re also seeing something new in South Carolina, as Santee Cooper approved an MOU with Brookfield Asset Management to explore the completion of the partially built AP1000 units at the VC Summer Site. 
• Big Tech continued showing love for nuclear. Last year, major companies committed to tripling global nuclear capacity by the year 2050. Additionally, Google announced that it would fund the development of three nuclear power sites. This came hot off of the heels of their announcement with Kairos from 2024. And that wasn’t all, there were plenty of other examples like it.
• Support at the state level kept popping off. Support at the state level for nuclear is at an all-time high, with 45 states engaged in 2025 in nuclear policymaking, and state legislatures in particular introducing more than 350 bills and enacting more than 60 measures in the past 12 months alone. Governors in 11 states highlighted nuclear in their State of the State addresses, and public utility commissions nationwide are opening dockets to evaluate deployment pathways, update regulatory processes, and prepare for advanced reactor projects. 
• Support in the public continues to go up. According to a Gallup poll, support for nuclear energy among all Americans went up to 61% in 2025, up from 55% in 2023. 
• Big financial investments. Everyone is seeing how important nuclear is for this moment, and that includes private investors. By the end of the year, we saw private investments totaling more than $2 billion in the U.S. market totaling more than $2 billion in the U.S. market.  

What could we see in 2026?

• NRC Modernization. We now have a full complement of NRC Commissioners. We are excited about the NRC getting to work on making the changes needed to accelerate regulatory reform. The Commission is acting on the bold direction in the ADVANCE Act of 2024 and May 2025 Executive Orders to modernize its regulatory processes for both new and existing reactors. The wholesale rulemaking has already begun, with 3 rulemakings complete or in progress, and as mentioned earlier, NEI sent in recommendations in July to support this process. We’ll keep you updated as progress is made throughout the year.  
• Continued growth with tech companies. Back in 2024, we saw a lot of work being done between tech and nuclear companies to provide clean energy for the massively growing energy needs that things like AI and data centers consume. In 2026, we’re expecting to see more of that work. Meta has already gotten the ball rolling by announcing three new nuclear deals. With these deals in place, we have reached 45 gigawatts of electricity in the pipeline for tech companies—that's nearly half of the current fleet.  
• Reactor Pilot Demonstrations. The Department of Energy (DOE) Reactor Pilot Program, stemming from a May 2025 Executive Order, selected eleven advanced nuclear reactor concepts to participate in an initiative to achieve criticality – or a sustained nuclear chain reaction, which is a building block of proving technological progress toward commercial operations -  starting on July 4th, 2026. The success of these projects would mark a major milestone in American advanced nuclear and be a steppingstone to the future deployment of new commercial reactors in the United States. 
• States are no longer testing the water. They’re stepping in by providing financial incentives, removing prohibitions, classifying nuclear as clean energy, commissioning formal feasibility studies, launching task forces, and even directing utilities to pursue gigawatt-scale deployment. This record-breaking activity indicates a shift from years of policy signaling to an era of execution backed by bipartisan support. 

There’s more that we’re looking to see in 2026 and more that happened in 2025. But if I wrote about all of them, this would become a never-ending blog, and no one wants that. Instead, you’ll have to follow along each week as we tackle the world of nuclear energy in 2026.