By Jennifer Hiller and Scott Patterson

President Trump aims to accelerate the slow-moving nuclear power industry through a series of executive orders signed Friday.

He outlined plans to overhaul the U.S. nuclear regulator, fast-track licenses for new projects, boost domestic fuel supplies and use federal lands for reactors for the military or large data centers for artificial intelligence.

"It's time for nuclear," Trump said at a signing ceremony at the White House attended by energy executives including Constellation Energy Chief Executive Joseph Dominguez and Jacob DeWitte, who leads nuclear developer Oklo.

Big tech is driving much of the push for more nuclear power. Building advanced AI systems will take city-sized amounts of power, which has turbocharged electricity demand projections for the first time this century.

Tech giants have been on the hunt for power but are running into backlogged supply chains and challenges obtaining the specialized equipment needed to connect to the grid. Amazon.com and Google are among those that have signed agreements to buy power from future nuclear projects. Meanwhile, the industry expects to lean heavily on power from current and future natural gas power plants and renewable power.

Although nuclear power is seen as an attractive zero-carbon energy alternative to coal and natural gas, new plants take years to be approved and permitted and a decade or longer to build. Trump's executive orders seek to dramatically shorten that time frame.

"We're wasting too much time on permitting," Constellation's Dominguez said at the White House ceremony.

A White House official said Friday in a briefing to reporters that the administration expects nuclear reactors to be tested and deployed within Trump's term.

"America's great innovators and entrepreneurs have run into brick walls when it comes to nuclear technologies," Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said in the briefing. The executive orders will "ensure America's energy dominance and provide affordable, reliable, safe and secure energy to the American people," he said.

Trump signed executive actions in January aimed at unleashing America's energy resources, particularly oil and gas. The push to fast-track nuclear power comes as Congress weighs a budget that could strip some tax credits from clean-energy projects, which will hamper America's ability to build new power generation such as wind and solar.

Critics have long blamed the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for acting as a roadblock to new nuclear projects due to its lengthy review process. The commission issues licenses for constructing, operating and decommissioning nuclear power plants. The executive orders aim to speed up its process, mandating an 18-month timeline to approve new reactors. Defenders back the commission's safety record.

The Energy Department in April said it had identified 16 sites that could be used for data center development. The sites have energy infrastructure in place that could enable fast-track permitting for new energy generation, including nuclear, the DOE said.

Using government land means that projects could go through an authorization process that doesn't necessarily involve the NRC. The agency could be used in an advisory capacity similar to the process used for the Navy's nuclear reactors, said Jacopo Buongiorno, a nuclear science and engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Helping the NRC become more efficient would be a benefit, but more direct political control "could actually weaken its independence credibility with the public," Buongiorno said. "The devil is in the details."

Shares of nuclear power companies soared Friday. Nano Nuclear Energy rose 26%, and NuScale Power climbed 15%. Oklo -- which went public in 2024 through OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman's special-purpose acquisition company AltC -- jumped 24%. Energy Secretary Chris Wright was a board member before joining the administration.

Nuclear fuel supplier Centrus Energy rose 22%. Uranium miner Cameco, which owns part of the reactor company Westinghouse, rose 9%. Equipment provider GE Vernova was up 2%, while Constellation Energy, the largest generator of U.S. nuclear power, rose about 3%.

The nuclear power industry has experienced a surge in popularity and public opinion in recent years, but the Plant Vogtle project in Georgia includes the only new reactors in the U.S.

The first two reactors at the plant opened in the 1980s, but adding two more reactors cost more than $30 billion, more than twice the initial estimates, and are a key reason why much of the industry focus has shifted to smaller designs.

Developers are working on dozens of potential designs with the idea that smaller reactors that could be built in a factory setting, one after the next, could help drive down costs and overcome one of the industry's traditional stumbling blocks.

The Tennessee Valley Authority this week submitted a construction permit application to build a small modular reactor at the Clinch River site near Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Other efforts to add more nuclear power generation to the grid include restarting a handful of recently closed reactors. Michigan's Palisades nuclear plant and the undamaged reactor at Three Mile Island both aim to restart operations.

About 19% of U.S. electricity generation comes from nuclear power.

Write to Jennifer Hiller at jennifer.hiller@wsj.com and Scott Patterson at scott.patterson@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 23, 2025 15:15 ET (19:15 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.