The US nuclear industry is stuck. Can this startup get it rolling again?

The Nuclear Company, a venture capital–funded project-development firm, came out of stealth last week and announced eye-raising plans: It aims to deploy a 6-gigawatt nuclear-fission reactor fleet by the mid-2030s.

That 6 gigawatts would represent more nuclear-generating capacity than the U.S. has deployed in the last decade. The U.S. has commissioned only three new reactors since 2016 and currently has zero commercial reactors under construction, but nevertheless, it pledged to triple its nuclear capacity by 2050 along with more than 20 other countries at last year’s COP28.

In order to meet that long-shot goal, the U.S nuclear industry will have to radically change the way it operates. The new startup has a plan to try to achieve that. Instead of the first-of-a-kind construction process that has paralyzed the nuclear supply chain and workforce for the last 30 years, The Nuclear Company’s fleet-deployment model counts on using proven, licensed technology to construct a series of reactors across the U.S.

“Our target is to start putting clean neutrons on the grid by the mid-2030s” using a ​“design-once, build-many approach,” Juliann Edwards, chief development officer of The Nuclear Company, told Canary Media. ​“You can’t do a one-off project. You have to do things at fleet scale.”

Jonathan Webb, founder of bankrupt indoor-farming startup AppHarvest, is the cofounder and CEO of The Nuclear Company. Patrick Maloney, of investment firm CIV, is cofounder and chair. The Nuclear Company employs fewer than 50 people and has received an undisclosed funding round from investors including CIV, True Ventures, Wonder Ventures, Goldcrest Capital, and MCJ Collective. Edwards told Canary Media that an additional capital raise is in progress.

Despite the rising demand for nuclear’s always-on, carbon-free power, new development has been hamstrung by the fact that recent U.S. nuclear projects have almost all been over budget and behind schedule. For example, Georgia Power’s Vogtle Unit 3 — the first new American reactor in decades — finally came online last July, while Vogtle Unit 4 was connected to the grid earlier this year. The pair of Vogtle reactors came in years later than scheduled and at more than double the original cost estimate, although the second unit was less expensive and its build proceeded faster than its predecessor’s.

The Nuclear Company is trying to harness the potential power of the learning curve and the magic of economies of scale to overcome these hurdles. It’s not a new concept for the industry — the Department of Energy’s report ​“Pathways to Advanced Nuclear Commercial Liftoff” claims that a committed order book of reactors is critical to accelerating technology learning and making nuclear cost-competitive with fossil gas and renewables — but it’s a theory that has not yet been put into practice in the country. 

Can America regain its nuclear energy dominance?

The U.S. has the world’s largest nuclear power fleet and generates more electricity from fission energy than any other nation — for the time being. It’s clear that China is on track to take the lead in the coming decade, with 27 nuclear plants currently being built and another 70 in the planning stages. It aims to build a total of 150 new reactors by 2035 and currently has 55.

In the mid-2000s, the U.S. entered a drilling and fracking boom that increased the domestic supply of cheap natural gas. Over the same period, the costs of wind and solar power plunged, and more recently, lithium-battery-based energy storage has fallen. These inexpensive energy sources, along with pushback from nuclear opponents, resulted in U.S. nuclear companies losing deals to supply power in competitive markets.

But a new driver for building American nuclear power has emerged: the expected surge in baseload energy demand catalyzed by the rise of AI, a revitalization of domestic manufacturing, and the electrification of everything. U.S. electricity load growth is now expected to increase by 4.7 percent over the next five years, double the forecast from 2022, according to grid planners.

The Nuclear Company believes the best way to meet that demand is not just nuclear reactors in general, but specifically using proven ​“giga-scale reactors,” Edwards said. That’s a stark contrast to the small modular reactors (SMRs) much of the industry is focused on at the moment.

“We are looking to technologies that have been approved by the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] because we view regulatory certainty as an accelerant to ensure that we can actually build quickly,” said Edwards.

The list of reactors that already have U.S. design certification are as follows: the Westinghouse AP1000, the first Generation III+ reactor to be certified; the GE Hitachi advanced boiling-water reactor; GE Hitachi’s Economic Simplified BWR; Korea’s APR-1400 reactor; and NuScale Power​’s 50-megawatt reactor, the first and only SMR with regulatory approval in the U.S.

At one time, NuScale’s SMR appeared poised to be the next reactor built in the U.S. But the firm’s flagship project with Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems, a collection of 50 municipal and regional utilities across seven Western states, was scrapped last fall because it couldn’t secure enough subscriptions from utilities to make the project work financially, according to the firm’s third-quarter 2023 earnings report.

The failed NuScale project is a good example of the first-of-a-kind dead end that The Nuclear Company — and the DOE — want the industry to avoid.

The other reason The Nuclear Company is avoiding next-generation designs in favor of proven nuclear technologies is because the startup is a project developer, Edwards said — not a technology developer or an operator.

“We are not designing a new technology,” she said. ​“Our expertise is in developing a consortium around a proven, licensed technology that will give people a level of confidence to go forward and start a phased development approach to site, permit, construct, and operate a fleet of facilities.”

The consortium ​“has to be a hybrid coalition of industry folks, government, and financiers that add value as well as debt and equity,” said Edwards.

The U.S. government has been active in trying to reinvigorate the nuclear industry in recent years. The Biden administration has channeled big money toward keeping existing plants operating, siting reactors at shuttered coal-fired plants, developing domestic fuel sources, and supporting new, advanced reactor designs.

Nuclear power is also one of the few issues with bipartisan support in Congress. Earlier this month, President Joe Biden signed the Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act into law. The act will simplify Nuclear Regulatory Commission rules and make it easier to license next-generation reactors.

Additionally, the Inflation Reduction Act provides a charitable $15-per-megawatt-hour production tax credit, meant to keep today’s existing nuclear fleet competitive with gas and renewables, as well as a similarly generous investment tax credit to incentivize new plant construction.

Despite the renewed support, the deployment of nuclear power in the U.S. has been stymied by a perfect storm of regulatory, operational, societal, technological, and financial headwinds. According to The Nuclear Company’s thesis, this storm is at least part of the industry’s own making, the product of focusing too much on first-of-a-kind constructions and not at all on a repeatable, fleet-scale approach.

It’s going to take a lot of money and at least a decade before we know whether the startup is up to the task of making the long-promised American nuclear renaissance happen.