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- By Professor Victoria Sutton
Guest Opinion. One of the things that is never mentioned is something that both President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump agree on and that is increasing the nuclear power capacity in the U.S. Biden had a goal of tripling nuclear energy; Trump has a goal of quadrupling nuclear energy. Biden planned for 200GW by 2050; Trump’s goal is 400GW by 2050. In a recent survey, 61% of Americans favor nuclear energy.
The reasons may include reduced carbon emissions and compliance with our commitments on international climate change agreements, but the elephant in the room is the electricity appetite of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The electricity needs for data centers that run artificial intelligence applications cannot be met with existing energy resources. According to the MIT Technology Review: “In the US, estimates from industry and academia suggest energy demand for data centers could be as high as 400 terawatt-hours by 2030—up from fewer than 100 terawatt-hours in 2020 and higher than the total electricity demand from the entire country of Mexico.
One of the ways both presidents planned/plan to meet their goals is by building new nuclear reactor capacity, but also by recommissioning nuclear power plants that may have been decommissioned.
Remembering the 1970s and the context for the creation of these nuclear power plants: The commercial nuclear energy industry started in the U.S. with the first nuclear reactor going online in 1969 (Nine Mile Island), followed by others in 1971(Palisades) and 1974 (Three Mile Island). The first nuclear power plant to start operating in December 1969, the same month that one of the most sweeping environmental statutes in the world was passed, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. In July 1970, President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) through his reorganization plan. Yet nuclear power was not embraced as a clean alternative but as far too dangerous to humans and the environment.
Then in 1979, Three Mile Island had its infamous nuclear plant accident. Through a series of human errors, Unit 2 suffered a meltdown that produced radiation and caused the need to evacuate people within a five mile radius of the plant. Fortunately, there were no injuries and no deaths as a result of the accident. However, Unit 2 was permanently closed, and Unit 1 continued to produce energy until 2019.
The Palisades has been closed since 2022 and going into decommission status; while Three Mile Island stopped its last nuclear reactor Unit 1 in 2019.
Nuclear Energy Status
The United States now has 94 operating commercial nuclear reactors at 54 nuclear power plants in 28 states. The average age of these nuclear reactors is about 42 years old.
The oldest operating reactor, Nine Mile Point Unit 1 in New York, began commercial operation in December 1969. The newest reactor to enter commercial service is Unit 3 at the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia, which began commercial operation on July 31, 2023, and is the first reactor to come online since Watts Bar 2 was commissioned in 2016.
Of the 54 operating nuclear power plants, 19 have one reactor, 31 have two reactors, four have three reactors and one has four reactors. The U.S. nuclear energy industry has supplied about 20% of total annual U.S. electricity since 1990.
How do you decommission a nuclear power plant?
We have never decommissioned a nuclear power plant, so the first one will be a precedent setting regulatory process. It looks like the Palisades Nuclear Energy plant located in Covert Township, Michigan on the Lake Michigan shore, will be the first. The beginning of Palisades was nearly six decades ago. Construction started in 1967 and the plant began operation in 1971. The nuclear power plant was owned originally by Consumers Energy and purchased by Entergy in 2006. The following year it was granted renewal of its license to operate which would be current until 2031. But Entergy said the nuclear energy market was no longer viable, stopped operation and sold it for scrap to Holtec in 2022. Holtec then changed from decommissioning to restarting — something that had never been done.
There are two new legal authorities for decommissioning and bringing back into operation these nuclear power plants. The ADVANCE Act of 2024, intended to modernize the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and its processes; and Trump’s Executive Order 14302 Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base (May 23, 2025). Both support more efficient processes to approve licensing. The executive order specifically addresses “restarts” as important.
In the case of Palisades, they moved from decommissioned status to an operating license. NRC notes in their press release that “while these NRC approvals will allow Holtec to load fuel, there are still several licensing actions under NRC review and additional requirements that need to be met before the plant can start up under the original operating license, which would expire March 24, 2031.”
NRC approved the transfer of all licenses from the previous owner, Entergy to Holtec Decommissioning International LLC to Palisades Energy LLC.
Actions that make a restart viable is the acceptance of previous documents and programs by NRC, including “technical specifications, emergency plan, emergency action levels, and physical security plan, as well as programs for quality assurance, maintenance, and inservice inspections.” They are also using an Environmental Assessment from May 2025 where they made a finding of no significant impact on the environment (FONSI) which means no Environmental Impact Statement is needed.
So Palisades can now receive uranium for its nuclear reactor and begin the process of testing for their operating license. As NRC said, the plan will not open until it is safe and however long that is, is how long it will take. Palisades anticipates to begin operation in 2027 after spending $1.5 billion in renovations (government funded).
What of Three Mile Island?
Meanwhile Three Mile Island is watching the Palisades precedent. Three Mile Island, while decommissioned in 2019, was bought by Constellation to bring it back into operating status. They also expect to spend $1.5 billion to bring it back to operating condition. The renamed Three Mile Island, the Christopher M. Crane Clean Energy Center, has contracted with Microsoft to produce energy exclusively for their data center needs to fuel their artificial intelligence needs for 20 years. They will be selling it for $115-120 per MW, which is above market price of about $110 per GM. The Crane Center anticipates opening in 2028.
From here?
We’ve only just begun (also the title of a hit song released in 1970) to build our nuclear energy capacity with an ambitious goal of quadrupling that capacity. Ensuring these first projects are done safely and without incident is critical. Given we have had almost half a century to improve on safety and efficiency, we are more accepting of the known risks than we were with the unknown risks of the 1970s, with 61% of Americans now favoring nuclear energy. New types of reactors are under development and the new micro-reactor is in the proof of concept stage, but promising.
If we restart these two old and infamous nuclear energy plants built almost half a century ago, we will have achieved a pathway to our carbon free, high volume, consistent production of electricity resource. It seems our love affair with nuclear energy is heating up again for America, ‘cause “breakin up is hard to do” (another song from the 1970s) when it comes to nuclear energy.
To read more articles by Professor Sutton go to: https://profvictoria.substack.
Professor Victoria Sutton (Lumbee) is Director of the Center for Biodefense, Law & Public Policy and an Associated Faculty Member of The Military Law Center of Texas Tech University School of Law.
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