This piece was initially published in The National Interest.

Outdated regulations and high procedural requirements are inflating nuclear costs and slowing America’s clean energy expansion.

Nuclear energy is safe, clean, reliable, and scalable. It can power the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, revitalize industrial communities, and help meet our environmental ambitions. So why does building a nuclear plant in the United States cost so much?

Part of the answer is capital cost inflation and labor. Nuclear plants are capital-intensive and require many specialized engineers and expertise. But a significant and often overlooked driver is the regulatory framework. Not only was it built for a different era, but it also calcified into a system that increasingly added cost, time, and uncertainty without meaningfully improving public health or safety. 

Fortunately, that is changing. In recent years, laws signed by Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden prompted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to move toward a more pragmatic, performance-based, risk-informed framework. In the coming months, the NRC will finalize several critical rules to reduce the time and cost of deploying nuclear power. Taken together, these regulatory fixes will improve the economic outlook for nuclear energy, benefiting consumers, the economy, energy security, and the environment.

However, policymakers must not be complacent. One bill and two discussion drafts before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee would sustain that momentum. In recent testimony, I explained why these reforms could help reduce the time and cost of deploying nuclear power in the United States. 

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Policy Reform and Nuclear Construction Costs

The concrete, steel, and rebar used in nuclear power plants must meet strict quality-assurance standards to be considered “nuclear-grade.” These components can cost considerably more than alternatives, even when they are identical in performance and composition, because approval requires extensive analysis, testing, and documentation. A 2017 Idaho National Laboratory analysis found that quality-control and documentation requirements alone account for 41 percent of the cost of steel and rebar and 23 percent of the cost of concrete. A 2022 study estimated that nuclear-grade concrete costs 50 percent more than standard concrete—and, in some cases, nuclear components cost 50 times the price of equivalent commercial alternatives.

When nuclear-grade certification is required, even when it adds no safety value, many manufacturers simply don’t bother to meet the standard. That leaves nuclear developers captive to a handful of approved vendors who can charge accordingly. The NRC itself, in a 2025 report to Congress, acknowledged that although current regulations technically permit the use of standard commercial materials in some applications, the approval pathways are complex, costly, and applied inconsistently.

Then there are environmental reviews. Under current NRC practice, nearly every reactor application defaults to the most time-consuming and burdensome pathway. The NRC’s full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) can take three to five years to complete. That might be justifiable for a first-of-a-kind reactor on a greenfield site with unknown environmental conditions. However, the most comprehensive assessment is harder to justify for a site that has hosted energy production for decades, where the environmental trade-offs are already well understood. It is also hard to justify when the Department of Energy or the Department of Defense has already conducted an environmental review. 

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The same problem affects uranium enrichment facilities. The United States imports roughly 80 percent of its enriched uranium, and 20 percent of that still comes from Russia as Washington works toward a full ban by 2028. Domestic enrichment companies willing to invest face a regulatory framework that requires them to wait through a full licensing process, including mandatory hearings, even when no one requests one, before breaking ground. That uncertainty drives capital away and adds time and money to the process. 

Three Nuclear Reforms for Consideration

Congress is considering three measures that directly address these cost drivers. Together, they would continue to move nuclear energy regulation to a risk-informed, performance-based framework. 

The Build Nuclear with Local Materials Act directs the NRC to authorize the use of commercial-grade steel and concrete for non-safety-related structures at nuclear plants. It does not affect safety standards for reactor systems or anything critical to protecting the public. The NRC retains full authority to require stricter standards wherever they are genuinely necessary. Broadening the supplier base by inviting more steel and concrete suppliers to nuclear projects and reducing certification burdens where they add no safety value can help lower costs and shorten construction timelines.

The Recharge your Electric Car on the Highway to Alleviate Range Gaps Effectively (RECHARGE) Act removes another layer of delay: redundant National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews for advanced reactors built on retired fossil fuel sites and brownfields. These sites already have grid connections, transmission infrastructure, skilled workforces, and communities familiar with energy development. The environmental tradeoffs are well characterized. The RECHARGE Act categorically excludes such projects from NEPA review while leaving NRC licensing requirements fully intact. The NRC recently went down this path for the Long Mott Generating Station in Port Lavaca, Texas. Dow wants to use X-energy’s advanced reactors at an existing industrial site, and rather than conduct a full EIS, the NRC used a narrower Environmental Assessment. The RECHARGE Act would clarify, broaden, and make NRC’s authority more consistently applied. 

The Enrichment Licensing Modernization Act applies the same logic to uranium enrichment. It allows at-risk construction to begin while licensing reviews proceed, entirely at the developer’s own risk, with no taxpayer exposure. That means developers can begin certain construction activities while regulatory reviews continue, provided they comply with all applicable federal, state, and local laws. 

It permits tailored Environmental Assessments where a full EIS review isn’t warranted. And it eliminates mandatory hearings when no party asks for one.

The bill and discussion drafts under consideration would better enable the industry to deliver safe, clean power to the US economy. None of these bills eliminates the need for rigorous nuclear safety oversight to protect people and the environment. Rather, they represent a continued and welcome shift away from increasingly prescriptive requirements, excessive paperwork, and conservative assumptions that have little, if anything, to do with the performance or risk of the technology and the materials used in construction. These commonsense reforms are essential if the United States hopes to reduce nuclear construction costs, accelerate licensing timelines, deliver affordable, clean power, and compete globally in nuclear deployment. 

The views and opinions expressed are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of C3.