DOE’s American Nuclear Supply Chain Loans program is helping finance five nuclear power projects across the country.
Earlier this summer the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), through its Office of Energy Dominance Financing (EDF), announced a conditional, multi-billion dollar commitment to help finance new U.S. nuclear power projects. DOE is calling them American Nuclear Supply Chain Loans; they will partner Westinghouse, which makes nuclear reactors, with utility or energy companies to deploy 10 large scale nuclear reactors at five sites across the United States. By doing so the EDF loans will further the Trump administration’s stated goals of expanding domestic nuclear energy capacity to help meet the country’s burgeoning energy demands.
As you would guess: Nuclear reactors – like the Westinghouse AP1000, the only licensed large-scale commercial reactor currently operating in the U.S. – are incredibly complex, and the components required to make them require long lead times for manufacturing and delivery. The DOE says the EDF loans are structured to account for that. “The loan facilities’ bulk equipment purchase order structure creates a strong commitment to restarting the nation’s nuclear industry by providing the necessary financing for rebuilding the American nuclear supply chain,” its press release reads.
We agree: This kind of commitment will reinvigorate domestic supply chains. We have laws on the books that direct projects backed by federal tax dollars to give American manufacturers and workers the first shot at fulfilling their contract requirements. Specifically, we have the Build America, Buy America Act (BABA).
BABA was enacted in 2021, as part of larger federal infrastructure legislation that Congress passed that year. Its inclusion in a big infrastructure bill was fitting; before BABA, Buy America previously only applied to a handful of programs, mostly within the U.S. Department of Transportation. Now, because of BABA, Buy America has expanded coverage for infrastructure projects across all federal departments and agencies. Trump in his first term executive orders in fact laid the groundwork for applying Buy America broadly like this, reducing the use of waivers, broadening infrastructure definitions and adding new construction materials to the list of covered products.
This law and these policies will guide the American Nuclear Supply Chain Loans program, administered by the EDF. The loans’ total amount – $17.5 billion – is substantial, and meeting its requirements while adhering to BABA procurement rules is a chance to significantly strengthen the domestic supply chains needed to build something as complicated as a Westinghouse nuclear reactor. The materials EDF put out with this announcement say as much: The structure of the loans “sources a majority of components domestically” and “project components anticipated to be provided from an estimated 100+ companies across more than 40 states.”
That’s no small potatoes for the U.S. industrial base – especially as energy demands are expected to increase across the economy.
The project hopes to have these 10 nuclear reactors under construction by 2030. We’ll be keeping an eye on it as it moves forward.