Nuclear Energy - A Winning Message For Republicans On Affordability

Americans support nuclear energy. According to a recent poll by Pew Research, 59% of Americans want to build more nuclear power plants to meet our growing energy needs, and that number has been steadily rising over the last 5 years. In the 1950s, when nuclear energy had just been discovered, we seemed poised to harness the power of the atom and provide abundant, cheap energy to everyone. But since then, the Federal government has burdened nuclear power plants with more and more permitting and red tape. 

The artificial, unnecessary cost of all this red tape has hampered the growth of nuclear energy and raised the price of nuclear energy to the consumer. Energy is essential to industry, and changes in energy prices are the first domino to fall in a series of related price changes that alter the final price of everything we buy. So while rising energy prices cause rising costs of goods, falling energy prices correlate to falling prices of goods. Cheap energy is good for America and Americans all-around, and nuclear energy presents a largely untapped means of acquiring cheap energy. 

Fortunately, President Trump has given us a model for affordable nuclear energy that Republicans can build on and fully adopt in 2026. The President signed several executive orders in 2025 to streamline the regulatory process and build more power plants. These orders shorten the wait time for bureaucratic approval to just 18 months, rather than several years, and set a target to quadruple nuclear power generation by 2050.  His executive orders also start the process to recycle old nuclear fuel, a process that can re-use nuclear waste while removing more than 90% of the radioactivity, contributing to safer and cleaner energy. CPAC’s Center for Regulatory Freedom filed comments with the Trump Administration in September and November supporting efforts to make it easier to develop nuclear power innovations in America.

The President’s executive orders follow decades of Republican support for cheap nuclear power, but that was often hindered by Democrat interference. In 2002, Congress selected Yucca Mountain to be the site of a huge, highly secure storage facility for 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel. Political intervention led by Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid destroyed the project. Barack Obama promised to kill the Yucca Mountain project while he was on the campaign trail in 2008, and he cut off funding in 2010. Since the Federal government did not build the storage facility that it promised, it now has to pay billions of dollars per year to nuclear reactor companies to keep their spent fuel onsite.  Thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel are sitting in secure canisters on the premises of nuclear plants, with nowhere to go because Democrats prevented the storage facility from being built.  

Some Democrats have gone even further; in addition to wanting to stop new nuclear power plants from being built, they want to destroy the power plants that we already have. In April 2021, Chuck Schumer, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other New York Democrats forced the Indian Point Nuclear Plant in New York City to shut down even though it could have continued to operate for at least 20 more years.  Before the plant shut down, it produced enough electricity to power one million homes. To be clear, if you're a leftist and are advocating for carbon-free energy generation, supposedly because of climate change, and you're not advocating for nuclear power generation, then you really don't believe in carbon-free energy. You’re just anti-technology.

Recent polling shows that Democrats’ anti-nuclear stance is out of touch with the majority of Americans. 69% of Republicans and even 52% of Democrats want to build more nuclear power plants.  When the average American household spends nearly $150 every month on electricity, it’s no surprise that Americans are supportive of cheaper forms of energy. Republicans have a pivotal opportunity in 2026 to make nuclear energy a key part of their affordability platform. The nuclear energy issue highlights how Republicans have been working to advance science and technology while Democrats have obstructed technological progress and made life harder for ordinary Americans.