US Energy Secretary Says Biggest Use Of Loan Office Will Be For Nuclear Power Plants

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Monday the biggest use of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office will be for nuclear power plants.

The LPO has hundreds of billions of dollars in financing aid, including loan guarantees for projects that struggle to get bank loans. During President Donald Trump’s first term in the White House, the only use he made of the LPO was for financing reactors at the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia.

“By far the biggest use of those dollars will be for nuclear power plants to get those first plants built,” Wright told a conference of the American Nuclear Society. The U.S. currently has no commercial nuclear reactors being built, though several intend to reverse their permanent shutdown status and open again, and there are other plans to build new large and small reactors.

Wright said electricity demand from artificial intelligence and data centers will bring in billions of dollars of equity capital from “very creditworthy providers.” That financing will be matched “three to one, maybe even up to four to one, with low-cost debt dollars from the Loan Programs Office,” Wright said.