Is Washington’s Nuclear Renaissance Just An Illusion?

Congress is taking another crack at removing regulatory barriers to America’s nuclear energy industry, but the latest slate of bills still has a long way to go before reaching President Donald Trump’s desk.

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce advanced six nuclear energy bills Sept. 2 addressing nuclear fuel, licensing and the federal workforce responsible for reviewing new projects. The full committee ordered the measures reported after they previously cleared the Energy Subcommittee on July 14, according to the Congressional Record. None of the six bills has passed the House or Senate.

“We’re really having to start this industry back over and recreate it,” Jason Isaac, founder and CEO of the American Energy Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The legislation would change requirements governing nuclear fuel recycling and uranium enrichment facilities, eliminate mandatory Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) hearings when no party contests certain license applications and address compensation for senior NRC staff, according to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The U.S. had 96 operating commercial nuclear reactors across 57 power plants in 28 states as of March 2026, with the reactors averaging roughly 44 years old, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Nuclear energy holds “tremendous promise as an affordable, reliable and environmentally friendly power source,” James Taylor, president of the Heartland Institute, told the DCNF.

The bills come as the Trump administration separately pushes to expand nuclear generation. Trump signed a series of executive orders in May 2025 directing changes to NRC rules and other federal policies governing nuclear development.

“The biggest obstacles to nuclear power are political opposition,” Taylor told the DCNF, before highlighting economic and environmental arguments made by anti-nuclear groups.

Republican Kentucky Rep. Brett Guthrie, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said during the Sept. 2 markup that the legislation is intended to “clarify pay authority, improve transparency, and eliminate unnecessary Atomic Energy Act requirements.”

Six Bills, But No Laws Yet

The six measures entered Congress at different points over the past year and target separate parts of the federal nuclear regulatory system.

Republican Ohio Rep. Bob Latta and Democratic California Rep. Scott Peters introduced H.R. 3978, the Nuclear REFUEL Act, on June 12, 2025. The legislation would change how the NRC licenses facilities that recycle used nuclear fuel.

The NRC currently classifies certain spent-fuel recycling facilities as “production facilities” under the Atomic Energy Act. The proposed legislation would amend that definition to exclude equipment capable of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel without isolating plutonium and allow such facilities to instead be licensed through an existing fuel-cycle pathway.

More than 95,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel are stored at 79 sites across more than 30 states, while U.S. reactors generate about 2,000 additional metric tons each year, according to the Department of Energy.

Recycling the material could reduce costs associated with storing spent fuel while creating another source of nuclear fuel, Isaac argued. “We’re essentially supplying our own fuel,” Isaac told the DCNF.

Republican Virginia Rep. Morgan Griffith, Democratic Washington Rep. Kim Schrier and Democratic Texas Rep. Marc Veasey introduced the Efficient Nuclear Licensing Hearings Act, H.R. 5549, on Sept. 23, 2025. The measure would eliminate mandatory hearings when no party contests certain NRC license applications while preserving hearings when a dispute exists.

Democratic Florida Rep. Kathy Castor introduced the Department of Energy Nuclear Transparency Act, H.R. 9084, on June 2, 2026. The measure would increase public reporting requirements surrounding certain Department of Energy actions involving nuclear facilities.

Three more measures were introduced July 9, according to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Republican South Carolina Rep. Russell Fry introduced the American Enrichment Deployment Act, H.R. 9612, which would change licensing procedures for uranium enrichment facilities and require the NRC to issue or revise implementing regulations within 180 days of enactment.

Democratic New Jersey Rep. Rob Menendez introduced the NRC Staff Pay Alignment Act, H.R. 9614, which would give the NRC chairman additional authority to increase compensation for certain senior career employees.

Republican Tennessee Rep. Diana Harshbarger introduced the Nuclear Advisory Committee Reform Act, H.R. 9613, which would narrow the role of the NRC’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards by directing it to focus on reactor design issues that are safety-significant, novel and previously unaddressed.

Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee argued during the markup that the measure would weaken independent nuclear safety review.

All six measures cleared the Energy Subcommittee during a July 14 markup before the full Energy and Commerce Committee ordered the bills reported Sept. 2, according to House records.

Getting through committee, however, is only one hurdle. The measures would still need to clear the House and Senate in identical form before reaching Trump’s desk.

Congress Has Tried Before

Congress has repeatedly attempted to tackle problems facing the nuclear industry, with mixed results.

The ADVANCE Act stands out as one recent success. President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan legislation into law July 9, 2024, according to the NRC.

The law directed the NRC to make licensing reviews more efficient and predictable, established an expedited procedure for qualifying new reactor license applications, changed certain fees for advanced reactor applicants and addressed recruitment and retention of the commission’s workforce, according to the NRC.

The legislation passed the Senate 88-2 and the House 393-13, according to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

Other nuclear proposals have not been so fortunate.

Congress has spent decades wrestling with where to put the nation’s spent nuclear fuel, with lawmakers repeatedly failing to resolve the future of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2017, H.R. 3053, sought to address regulatory and land-use issues surrounding Yucca Mountain while authorizing the Department of Energy to store spent fuel at an NRC-licensed interim storage facility.

The Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act drew lobbying efforts from electric utilities, nuclear industry groups and other energy organizations, according to federal lobbying disclosures.

The Nuclear Energy Institute, which represents the commercial nuclear industry, later praised the legislation after Congress passed it in December 2018. NEI President and CEO Maria Korsnick said the legislation would create a more predictable NRC funding structure benefiting operating reactors and future licensees.

Lawmakers ran into another roadblock when they tried to revive Yucca Mountain through the federal appropriations process.

The House approved funding to restart the project’s licensing process for fiscal year 2018, but the Senate did not include the funding, leaving it out of the final spending law, according to CRS.

The Trump administration requested $120 million⁠ in fiscal year 2019 for the Department of Energy to restart the Yucca Mountain licensing process and develop interim nuclear waste storage capacity. The House approved $100 million more than the administration requested for Yucca Mountain, while the Senate approved no funding for the project, according⁠ to the Congressional Research Service.

Republican Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Republican Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander and Democratic California Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced the Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2019 on April 30, 2019.

The legislation would have created an independent organization to manage nuclear waste and established a consent-based process for selecting nuclear waste facilities, according to the bill. The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources held a hearing on the legislation in June 2019, but Congress adjourned without enacting it.

The six bills are part of a broader nuclear policy push on Capitol Hill; the same day the Energy and Commerce Committee advanced the measures, the House Science, Space and Technology Committee held a hearing titled “Powering the Nuclear Renaissance: Accelerating U.S. Leadership in Advanced Nuclear Reactors,” according to the House schedule.

Energy and Commerce had also held a hearing on the six bills in June, hearing testimony from nuclear industry representatives and former federal officials before advancing the measures this month.