This piece originally appeared in the American Conservative.
The Trump administration is perhaps the most pro-nuclear administration America has seen since Eisenhower. The president has made energy dominance a linchpin of his economic agenda; his energy secretary, Chris Wright, considers unleashing the atom vital for unlocking a Golden Age of American energy.
This couldn’t come at a better time. After decades of flat power demand, electricity demand in the United States is estimated to increase by 128,000 megawatts, or 15 percent, over the next five years—and that’s on the low end of projections. Green energy policies, however, have weakened the American grid, leaving the country vulnerable to Spanish-style energy shortfalls. As the CEO of the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, John Bear, put it, “We have to face some hard realities ... the transition that is underway to get to a decarbonized end state is posing material, adverse challenges to electric reliability.”
America has been struggling to keep the lights on, let alone handle the oncoming wave of demand from manufacturing and AI data centers. While we have normally relied on natural gas for its firm power and quick deployment, lead times on turbines and gas plants stretch beyond the five-year mark.
