By Kennedy Maize
The DOE move to prop up the nuclear big iron also prompts a recollection of the words of the great American philosopher Lawrence “Yogi” Berra: “It’s déjà vu all over again.” Alternatively, “Been there. Done that. Didn’t work.” Some 20 years ago, facing a 30-year decline in the U.S. nuclear power business (no reactor ordered after 1974 got built), the George W. Bush administration threw $8 billion in 2005 dollars each to two, two-unit AP-1000 reactor projects.
The Trump administration and its Department of Energy have made Canada–who many Americans other than Donald Trump consider our closest ally and good friend–happy. Recently (June 23, 2026), DOE’s loan office (grandiosity renamed the Office of Energy Dominance Financing) announced a $17.5 billion dollar loan program to subsidize building five as yet unidentified, two-unit 1,000-MW, nuclear power plant stations.
These “supply chain loans” are intended to get projects off the ground. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said that “these conditional loans will play an important role in reviving the supply chain needed for America to once again build large-scale commercial reactors.”
Westinghouse Set-Up
Westinghouse makes the only licensed reactor that matches DOE’s desires, the AP-1000. The DOE news release said,
Westinghouse will partner with up to five eligible utilities and energy companies nationwide to procure the long-lead items at a fixed price. Each project will be jointly owned by Westinghouse and a utility or energy company partner. Both Westinghouse and the partner are required to fully commit their project equity, $500 million each ($1 billion total per project), upfront prior to accessing DOE loan funds.
DOE says it intends that the low interest federal loans be used to buy long-lead items (“complex components of a nuclear power plant that require the longest time for manufacturing and delivery”). Unstated is that Westinghouse is a Canadian company. It is jointly owned by Cameco (49%) and Brookfield Renewable Partners (51%), both traded on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges. Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse has not been a U.S. company since 1998, when it was sold to Britain’s nuclear company BNFL, then to Japan’s Toshiba in 2005, went into bankruptcy in 2017, and ended up in the Cameco-Brookfield consortium in 2023.
If and when those projects go on line, their nuclear fuel will be provided by Cameco, whose main business is uranium mining, another boon for Canada.
From its headquarters in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Cameco welcomed the DOE loan announcement. CEO Tim Gitzel said:
We are pleased to see the US government make this additional commitment to expanding nuclear power capacity using the proven AP1000 reactor technology…. The expansion of nuclear power in the United States is expected to create significant opportunities for Westinghouse and Cameco, accelerating growth in Westinghouse’s energy systems segment during the procurement and subsequent construction phase.
Brookfield also has deep and abiding Canadian roots. One of the company’s early chief executives was a Canadian economist named Mark Carney. He’s now the Liberal Party prime minister of Canada.
The DOE move to prop up the nuclear big iron also prompts a recollection of the words of the great American philosopher Lawrence “Yogi” Berra: “It’s déjà vu all over again.” Alternatively, “Been there. Done that. Didn’t work.” Some 20 years ago, facing a 30-year decline in the U.S. nuclear power business (no reactor ordered after 1974 got built), the George W. Bush administration threw $8 billion in 2005 dollars each to two, two-unit AP-1000 reactor projects.
Remember Vogtle #3 and #4?
Georgia Power got funds for two new units at its existing two-unit Vogtle nuclear station, ultimately totalling $12 billion in taxpayer dollars. Construction began in 2009 with the estimated cost of $14 billion. The two new units came into service in 2023 and 2024 at a cost of over $36 billion.
The rate backlash of the overpriced reactors led to two Democrats ousting two entrenched Republicans in a statewide election to The Peach State’s Public Service Commission last November, leaving three surviving Republicans on the commission. Those seats were not on the ballot. In South Carolina, a partnership of investor-owned Scana Corp. (South Carolina Electric and Gas) and state-owned Santee Cooper got $8 billion (ultimately $9 billion) also for two AP-1000 units. The project collapsed in 2017 (the same year Westinghouse went into bankruptcy, partly as a result of the Summer and Vogtle projects).
Ultimately some Westinghouse executives faced criminal charges. Scana Corp, which bet the company on the Summer project, lost its bet and was gobbled up by Virginia’s Dominion Energy. Efforts, so far still in the planning stage, are underway in South Carolina to resurrect V.C. Summer’s two unfinished AP-1000s. DOE’s pledged $17.5 billion sounds like a lot of money (and it is for most folks).
But spread over 10 units, that’s a modest $1.75 billion each. Is that significant for projects that are likely to cost upward of $20 billion each? The new DOE push for big reactors raises questions about the fate of the agency’s previously aggressive program for advanced small modular reactors. The Westinghouse reactors, unlike the SMRs, actually exist. The DOE AP-1000 announcement preceded a nosedive of the stock of SMR high-flyer Oklo, with a paper reactor design and no revenue.
The Motley Fool (an online investment site) commented:
The Trump Administration remains very bullish on nuclear power and committed to helping build a nuclear renaissance in the U.S. — that’s the good news. The bad news is that, financially speaking, much of the administration’s support is being thrown behind big nuclear reactors.
Overall, as OilPrice.com reports, SMRs have significant hurdles to deployment. The energy news service commented,
While SMRs are likely to play a major role in the nuclear industry’s future, severe delays and funding gaps have slowed deployment. The United States is currently playing catch-up with China and Russia, while Europe and other regions of the world could still be several years behind in commercial SMR deployment.
Final Thought
In an ironic twist, Canada seems to be well ahead of the U.S. in the SMR world. In April, Ontario Power Generation, the utility owned by the province, began major construction at its Darlington nuclear site of the first of four GE Vernova 300-MW BWRX-300 advanced boiling water reactors. Operation is targeted for 2030. A massive crawler crane lowered a 953-tonne steel and concrete slab onto a 35-meter deep shaft, completing the 2.1 million pound reactor basemat. Oil Price commented, “Construction has begun on the Western world’s first grid-scale Small Modular Reactor (SMR), though small is not what comes to mind, considering that the machine will fit on two soccer fields.”
Kennedy Maize is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist who has covered energy and environmental topics for more than 40 years. This post originally appeared at The Quad Report. His previous posts can be viewed here.
The Canadians are demonstrating they are not consistently meatheaded, despite how long Trudeau stuck around.
Trudeau had nothing to do with anything nuclear in Canada. Provinces decide on power generation decisions, not the federal government. The only federal government activity in nuclear is ownership of the national nuclear laboratory and running Canada’s nuclear regulator.
Trudeau is an intellectual vacuum. He was politicized ( read lobotomized) when he went through the World Economic Forums training program for future leaders.
Indeed, they would be fools to not seek a $17.5 billion USD loan at very favorable interest rates and conditions for a total “equity investment” by them of only $5 billion USD for the five specified nuclear power plants.
Great gig if you can get it.
Gee, now why would Canada have an edge-up on the US here?
“Northern Saskatchewan’s major high‑grade uranium mines commonly produced ore in the range of about 1% to over 20% U3O8, with flagship deposits clustering between ~4% and ~19% U3O8.
Colorado Plateau uranium deposits were generally much lower grade than northern Saskatchewan’s high‑grade deposits — typical mined grades on the Colorado Plateau ranged from about 0.05% to ~0.3% U3O8 for many sandstone/carnotite deposits, with some local pockets and vein deposits up to ~1% U3O8 or slightly higher.”
(I knew those numbers off the top of my head, but many here are wise enough to not trust stuff that comes from the top of my head so I quickly verified them with Perplexity.)
Peak ore concentrations for uranium at both McArthur River and Cigar Lake are higher than those concentrations by a factor of more than one order of magnitude. Your numbers on Northern Saskatchewan ore concentrations are much too low.
Much of the Athabasca Basin remains to be surveyed – about 90 per cent of it.
I admit to not understanding your comment; it is difficult to get an ore concentration an order of magnitude higher than 12%, which is the average of 4 to 19% given for flagship deposits.
Ignore the down votes, consider them badges of honor for hitting the nail on the head.
Personally, I things the best thing to come out of the USA in the last 20 years is wattsupwiththat. And I am serious.
Thank you Mr Watts, and all of the support group. You too Willis.
We live in an interesting world where straight-forward measured and recorded data generates disparaging reactions because it opposes belief.
My recommendation is to get China to design and build them for a fixed price. They get the job done. The USA just talks about doing things these days.
The Canadian leader is a breath of fresh air. My guess is they will take a lot manufacturing out of the USA. They make a lot of car parts. All they need is a small, midsize and large. Folks from the USA can fly across and buy them cheap from the factory showroom.
Imagine what the USA could be like with a leader like that.
An American friend said, “we are not very good at picking presidents.
Fortunately, unlike many other nations around the globe, the USA has the Constitutionally-guaranteed option for Presidential choice redo’s every four years.
One has to admire the insightful wisdom of the US “founding fathers” for their pre-planned damage control!
No kings.
A number of problems with your post.
Too much insulting political commentary.
A number of problems with your concept.
USA security would be even more dependent on arch-rival China.
Transportation across the Pacific is not cheap.
Human rights abuses in China are not to be supported.
USA needs to build up industry at home, not on the other side of the planet.
How ’bout NO!?
Any help would be much appreciated-
Australia’s energy policy living in its own private Idaho
Eventually, because of lower fuel cost, even CCGT will struggle to compete with SMR, it can’t miss but if Trump and Wright stay with their legacy mega scale proven uneconomical “big iron” plan instead of supporting an SMR assembly line plant the SMR market bonanza will be with Chinese reactors not US. Don’t doubt it. The only question is who will lead the inevitable energy future, China or the U.S. We’ll know in less than 5 years.
NuScale Power small scale modular reactors are proven by decades of successful operation because the core technology is essentially the same as other water-cooled light water pressurized systems but with passive cooling. In the event of a major operational upset the reactor gets cool instead of hotter.
The 77 MWe reactor is simply reduced in size to enable one NRC design approval fits all, factory assembled, cookie cutter identical, semi-trailer delivered reactors for plug and play. Economy of scale comes from standardized repetitive manufacturing and large sales volume instead of large reactor size.
The reactors are delivered to the jobsite, lowered into pre-built below grade vaults and within a year or so, instead of a decade or so, ready for operation. This puts nuclear on an equal construction time frame with wind and solar but with most of all dispatchability, and also 3x longer life cycle, and 3x higher capacity factor, plus unlike W&S affordable storage capability. The high exothermic nuclear reaction can heat molten salt sufficiently to enable heat storage for later additional steam raising.
Please read that sentence very carefully: “essentially the same . . . but with passive cooling” . . . now what might be wrong with that statement?
Once again, it is not just fuel costs.
It is total cost of ownership.
The BWRX-300 SMRs don’t sound like modular builds…
They are. They’re a scaled down version of a large reactor that General Electric tried to sell a couple of decades ago.
The irony is that the AP-1000 discussed in this article is a scaled up version of the AP-600, which was a smaller design, borderline of a Small Modular Reactor, which Westinghouse developed back in the late twentieth century.
China bought the IP rights to most of this technology and then replaced the rest with their own tech, so there will be many plants built according to this design, but they won’t be built by Westinghouse. The South Koreans did the same thing with the System 80 design by Combustion Engineering (a company that no longer exists, because it was acquired by Westinghouse), and they’re still having a good run with it.
Long story short: The West is good on innovation, but bad on performance; the East (Asians) are weak on innovation (they mostly just take technology from the West), but they can actually build things on schedule and on budget.
On “Long story short”
The cost and schedule of these types of projects is highly dependent on, after the starting gun has fired, how many people the gov’t let declare themselves “stakeholders” and lets them have a say in the project development. In the West, dissenters delay projects with protests and legal proceedings, while in other places they are simply arrested…
Agree. 100 MWe should be considered maximum SMR size. If the reactor isn’t factory assembled and shipped on semi-trailers in three (3) sections or less for fast fit up and plug and play it’s not small modular and loses all the advantages of factory instead of field fabrication.
Subsidies = risk socialised, profits privatised. Taxpayers lose, shareholders win.
Nuclear is the most expensive electricity production using spinning generators otherwise subsidies and guaranteed wholesale prices would not be needed.
It doesn’t happen with coal or gas power stations… why not?
Canada is going to need all the help they can get .
When the US-Mexico bilateral trade deal is completed (this month ?) the USA will give Canada the written notice of with-drawl from USMCA .
And that means in 6 months more , USMCA is cancelled.
And Canada is screwed .
If trump continues like that the US will stand alone.
The US will stand .
And others will fall .
Is it worth it? Making the life of your children and grandchildren worse?
You obviously don’t like a prosperous USA.
Most US citizens do.
And my children and grandchildren do.
North korea and russia prosperous. Isolated and alone.
And other countries are investing trillions in the USA …..we are NOT alone.
The trillions:
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/10/11/politics/fact-check-trump-17-trillion-investment
The reality:
https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/world-trade-without-us
https://www.morethanshipping.com/the-world-is-making-deals-to-bypass-the-u-s-as-a-result-of-trumps-tariffs/
Your TDS is strong …
your “facts” are weak …
True unwavering faith. Agent krasnov would be proud of you.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/trump-global-weakness-watch-how-trump-is-undermining-american-power/
What country do you live in ?
You don’t seem to be American .
Ashamed or afraid to tell us ?
False.
Neither are prosperous.
They have each other along with other countries, so they are not isolated and alone.
Once again, you post your opinion as factual in a manner that is a thinly veiled negative politically biased.
There are other possibilities.
I will not engage in a flame war with you.
Respond as you wish, but know I will ignore you.
Once again, you post your opinion as factual in a manner that is a thinly veiled negative politically biased.
There are other possibilities.
I will not engage in a flame war with you.
Respond as you wish, but know I will ignore you.
“And that means in 6 months more , USMCA is cancelled.”
That is speculative. It could happen, but there are other possibilities.
True ….
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2026/07/05/a-shift-begins-canadian-media-start-discussing-six-month-usmca-termination-possible/
SOB
Nonsense, they are planning for that eventuality now, and have been for a while.
The rest of the world has welcomed them.
Trumps tariffs was the final straw.
The USA has proven itself to be too unreliable, and erratic.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2026/07/01/ustr-jamieson-greer-makes-it-official-the-usmca-is-not-renewed/
If you are Canadian , I hope you don’t get too badly hurt .
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2026/07/09/survey-many-canadian-manufacturers-considering-relocation-to-u-s/
Say, by analogy, nations are like old fashioned cattle ranches….in NA we had a deal that when cattle roamed, they were still owned by the ranch on which they were born. Trump has declared that any cattle found on his property are the property of his ranch, and he is now enticing cattle onto his ranch with truckloads of green feed. His logic is that his ranch invented ranching, and his cowboys are using illicit tobacco that they buy from those neighbors.
His cowboys are ecstatic, cuz Trump has told them their pay will be higher and there will be more employment for them with his “Make Finders Keepers Again” policies…One might wonder why such moves are unpopular with the neighbors ?…especially since their unemployment rates are already double that of the U.S., their incomes lower, they spend more trying to attract world class industries, etc, etc…
Read about the Gordie Howe bridge before you downvote…should be embarrassing to anyone with a sense of fairness.
Let’s see . . . if I understand the above article correctly, Canada and its industry, outside of the US, are set to receive a “low interest” loan from the US for the production of multiple large output nuclear reactors (300 MWe AP-100 size, or equivalent) just by committing $5 billion USD (for five separate “projects”) to receive $17.5 billion USD total.
Of course, there are no details provided regarding the loan interest rate being above or below the projected rate of inflation in the US, the duration of the loan(s)—if there are such!—or the repayment terms if Canada and its “industry partners” default on the terms (including completion date and product delivery) in the loan(s).
BTW, as regards the above article’s Final Thought paragraph related to Small Modular (Nuclear) Reactors, SMRs: not many informed persons consider a 300 MWe nuclear reactor to really be a SMR. For example, there is absolutely no way that such a reactor could designed to be portable, let alone air-cooled. The paragraph’s reference to “2.1 million pound reactor basemat” and “the machine will fit on two soccer fields” are noted. Caveat emptor.
Valid points.
There is no concise, universally agreed to, definition of SMR.
The term is thrown around a lot without context.
Canada, specifically the province of Ontario, is positioning itself to become the go to place on the North American continent for new-build nuclear power expertise .
As I see it, the federal and state governments will be funding any new-build nuclear power plants which might be constructed here in the United States, either partially or completely.
Those governments will be choosing the winners in the competition for whose nuclear technology will be adopted as standards for new-build nuclear construction in the US.
In my personal opinion, the main competitor designs, as determined by the federal and state governments, will be the Canadian CANDU natural uranium reactor design, the AP1000 reactor design as used at Vogtle 3 & 4, and the BWRX-300 SMR design as is being used at Canada’s Darlington expansion project.
A small group of Canadian advocates of nuclear power run a blog called Decouple which takes a close look at the technology of nuclear power and also at the people and the processes used to design, construct, and operate a nuclear power plant.
A nuclear power plant — and the processes and people used to design, construct, and subsequently operate that nuclear power plant — are all One Thing. These are not separate things.
In that vein, three articles from the Decouple blog should be of interest to readers of this current WUWT article.
— CANDU: The Truly Modular Reactor (480 micro reactors in one tank of water.)
— Understanding Vogtle (James Krellenstein deep-dives America’s most recent nuclear build)
— Small Reactor, Big Price (The Darlington SMR is moving forward, and it’s expensive)
It is now a certainty that the United States will announce a complete exit from the USMCA trade agreement, using the six-month notice clause of the trade agreement.
What remains to be seen is how that exit will impact Canada’s ambitions to become the go to place on the North American continent for new-build nuclear construction expertise.
It is my understanding that Mark Carney did not divest his holdings in Brookfield Asset Management when he became Prime Minister. If so, what’s good for Brookfield is good for Carney.