The Tennessee Valley Authority is leaning into the hype on new nuclear energy.
The utility now has three projects underway to bring nuclear plants online in Tennessee and potentially beyond by the 2030s.
“No utility is working harder or faster than we are when it comes to deploying new nuclear technology,” TVA CEO Don Moul said during an August board meeting.
Hype is increasing around the future of nuclear. Dozens of projects have been announced nationally in recent months, backed by big funders like Google, Bill Gates and OpenAI founder Sam Altman.
Skepticism is likely just as prevalent, as the nuclear industry has a long history of delays, cost overruns and failed projects. The three projects TVA is pursuing are essentially pilots for small modular reactors, which can be downsized versions of traditional reactors or include newer methods of cooling the radioactive process. None of the proposed reactors have been tested commercially.
But if any of these projects actually deliver — TVA will be ahead of the pack in a new world of nuclear.
TVA is already, usually, about 40% nuclear
TVA normally sources about 40% of its total electricity from its three nuclear plants in a given year.
That changed this past year. Numerous, unplanned outages dropped the nuclear share of its energy mix to just 31% in the first three quarters of this past fiscal year.
Generally, however, nuclear is the utility’s largest source of electricity.
TVA plans to add far more nuclear capacity with “small modular reactors,” or SMRs, which are broadly defined as reactors with a capacity no larger than 300 megawatts per unit. Traditional reactors are often about 1,000 MW, or 1 gigawatt.
Globally, companies are working on more than 80 SMR designs, while just two are operational in Russia and China.
In the U.S., the remote Tennessee town of Oak Ridge, which houses the nation’s largest science laboratory and the world’s first reactor to generate electricity from nuclear power, will serve as an axis for many domestic reactor projects, as well as facilities for uranium processing, nuclear waste recycling and the manufacture of “portable nuclear generators.”
TVA is betting on three different reactors.
TVA is pursuing its own SMR construction
In May, TVA became the first utility in the nation to ask permission from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build an SMR near the Clinch River in Oak Ridge.
The plan is to construct a plant with a 300 MW reactor from GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy with a goal of commercial operation by 2032. TVA has suggested that the site could hold up to four of these reactors.
TVA first pitched the project to the NRC in 2010, though nuclear plans for the Clinch River site date back even further: TVA first attempted to build a nuclear reactor there in 1970, but the project was scrapped about a decade later after the cost estimate of $400 million rose to more than $8 billion.
TVA originally said they would use Babcock and Wilcox’s mPower reactor, a proposed pressurized water reactor. The company could have obtained as much as $226 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Energy for the project, but it was terminated in 2017 due to a lack of investment.
In 2019, TVA became the first utility in the U.S. to get approval for an early site permit from the NRC to build a nuclear plant at the Clinch River site.
TVA selected GE Vernova Hitachi as the reactor developer in 2023. The company’s BWRX-300 is basically a smaller version of a traditional reactor and uses the same fuel as some of TVA’s existing reactors. GE Vernova Hitachi is currently in the pre-application review process for the reactor and will later submit an application to certify the safety of its design.
In January 2025, TVA applied for an $800 million grant from the Department of Energy to expedite construction.
Now, TVA is developing the potential Clinch River project cost estimate and schedule while waiting for construction approval from the NRC to begin building the plant.
TVA makes corporate nuclear deal to support Google
In August, TVA scored another first: the utility signed a contract to buy nuclear power from a startup called Kairos Power to support Google data centers in Tennessee and Alabama.
Kairos is planning to build a molten salt nuclear reactor, which will use lithium fluoride and beryllium fluoride salts as a coolant instead of water. Salt technology is potentially a safer way to produce nuclear power.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory initiated the first such reactor in 1965 and ran it for a few years as an experiment. Canada, China and Russia also have molten salt reactor projects in the works, but no reactors are in commercial operation, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Kairos is currently constructing a demonstration vessel of its technology in Oak Ridge. The company calls the vessel a “non-nuclear reactor mockup,” which is part of an agreement with the Department of Energy with up to $300 million in funding.
TVA plans big with NuScale
Last month, TVA set up another contract to buy as much as 6 GW — or roughly 75% of its current total nuclear capacity — from ENTRA1 Energy, a startup with limited public information and ties to the Trump administration.
ENTRA1 plans to develop nuclear plants on TVA sites using 77 MW small modular reactors from NuScale Power.
NuScale is the only company with an SMR design approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has only ever approved six other designs. NRC approved a design for a 50 MW, advanced light-water SMR in 2023 and again in May 2025 for the company’s uprated 77 MW design. NuScale says a single power plant can be scaled up with 12 of its small reactors, equal to about 1 GW of capacity.
In 2014, NuScale announced that it would build the nation’s first SMR at the Idaho National Laboratory to provide power to a Utah utility. The Department of Energy-backed project was supposed to consist of six reactors that could generate a total of 462 MW but was scrapped in 2023 due to cost increases. The cost of the project, which was years behind schedule, was originally estimated at $3 billion in 2015 but later adjusted to $9.3 billion in 2023.
For the TVA project, ENTRA1 would own NuScale’s nuclear reactors and sell electricity to the utility. The project could provide enough energy to power about a few million homes or “60 new data centers,” according to TVA.
“This agreement with ENTRA1 Energy highlights the vital role public-private partnerships play in advancing next-generation nuclear technologies that are essential to providing energy security,” CEO Don Moul said in a statement.
Hype vs. skepticism
Last year, TVA appeared to have low confidence in significant nuclear developments in the near future in its latest Integrated Resource Plan draft. TVA plans for essentially no nuclear growth by 2035 and potentially significant nuclear additions by 2050.
But TVA has since increased its commitment to nuclear with the new contracts.
“Public power is uniquely positioned for this work. We can make long-term infrastructure investments without the pressure of short-term investor returns,” TVA spokesperson Scott Fiedler said in a statement.
Other leaders have been pitching support. Bill Gates, who founded nuclear company TerraPower, recently stated that “the future of energy is subatomic” in an editorial for POWER Magazine. Republican Governor Bill Lee, former governor Lamar Alexander and GOP Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty have also advocated for the industry in editorials.
The White House has issued multiple executive orders to boost nuclear power, expedite design approval processes by the Department of Energy and reform the NRC. President Donald Trump also fired an NRC commissioner.
In June, the energy department announced a pilot program to test advanced nuclear reactor designs outside of national laboratories at other government sites for projects led by the U.S. Department of Defense (recently renamed by Trump as the Department of War) or the private industry.
“For too long, the federal government has stymied the development and deployment of advanced civil nuclear reactors in the United States,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a statement.
The plan is to ensure at least three reactors are online by July 2026.
Last week, the department selected proposals from four companies, including Oklo and TRISO-X.
Oklo is a nuclear startup based in California and backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Secretary Wright used to serve as a board member for Oklo, whose stock recently jumped amid financial skepticism. Oklo is also planning to build a $1.68 billion facility to recycle used nuclear fuel in Oak Ridge.
TRISO-X is a subsidiary of Amazon-backed X-Energy. The company is also planning to build a uranium fuel facility in Oak Ridge with a $150 million tax credit from the Inflation Reduction Act, a since dismantled legislative package aimed largely at supporting renewables.
At the same time as the nuclear push, the Trump administration has boosted fossil fuels, rolled back transmission projects and planned to cut more than $8 billion in clean energy funding, removing support for renewable projects.
Nuclear is sometimes touted as a climate solution as plants do not produce greenhouse gas emissions. But there are other environmental, safety and health concerns.
Detractors say building new nuclear plants is currently expensive and involves potentially unproven technology, while renewables are often the cheapest source of energy, can be installed fast enough to cut U.S. climate pollution from electricity within a decade, and have become increasingly reliable with batteries, smart networks and transmission upgrades.
