Eyes on the Prize: US Nuclear Industry Chief Excited About Breakthroughs on Horizon

Todd Abrajano tells The Epoch Times that first-generation small modular reactors will be ‘online by the end of the decade or early 2030s.’

TerraPower’s atrium reactor will be built in the closing Kemmerer Coal Mine in Kemmerer, Wyo. John Haughey/The Epoch Times

Projects in Texas and Tennessee are on the cusp of delivering first-generation small modular reactor (SMR) prototypes designed to eventually be mass-produced and make nuclear power the “energy of the future,” an industry insider told The Epoch Times.

“We’re going to start seeing SMRs come online by the end of the decade or early 2030s,” United States Nuclear Industry Council CEO Todd Abrajano said.

In the November interview, Abrajano spoke about breakthroughs in nuclear fuel development, advanced reactor designs, and “first-mover” innovations spurred by federal and state investments and policy inducements.

Abrajano, who assumed leadership of the Washington-based council in January 2023, said at least three new technologies developed by the Reactor Pilot Program of the Department of Energy (DOE) and accelerated under May executive orders issued by President Donald Trump could “achieve criticality”—sustained energy generation—by July 4 of next year for the 250th anniversary celebration of America.

Among advances in expanding inexpensive, carbon-free, and transportable nuclear energy, he said, are intensifying initiatives in recycling spent nuclear fuel and creating an ample domestic supply of high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU).

HALEU is “a fuel that isn’t yet available at a commercial scale,” he said, but it is a linchpin in building SMRs that generate more power with less fuel.

Abrajano, whose 100-plus-member organization has front-end and back-end working groups focused on fuel cycle development, cited advancements by Saskatchewan-based Cameco, California-headquartered Oklo, and Maryland’s Centrus Energy as key in recycling used fuels and producing fuels that will make reactor innovations viable.

He cited Centrus’s September announcement heralding “a major expansion” at its DOE-partnered uranium enrichment plant in Piketon, Ohio, to produce HALEU and low-enriched uranium (LEU) as “massive” in encouraging “reactor builds.” Large, utility-scale nuclear reactors, including the 94 reactors at the United States’ 55 nuclear power plants, use LEU.

“Over the next several years, we’re going to start to see some significant fuel capacity be built up here in the United States,” Abrajano said. “What we’ve been able to see over the last 12 months is something that I’ve been hoping to see since I joined [the council], which is actually these advanced reactor developer companies starting to get orders.”

Those orders are not coming, as expected, from utilities, but from a new industry player.

U.S. Nuclear Industry Council President/CEO Todd Abrajano, in this file photo. U.S. Nuclear Industry Council

“We’re starting to see a lot of [data center] hyperscalers—Microsoft, Google, Amazon, those types of companies—make major investments, starting to put some money where their mouth is,” he said. “And so, obviously, you start putting these things into deployment and commercialization and things start to fall into place.”

Key Projects

Abrajano pointed to TerraPower’s experimental sodium-cooled natrium reactor being built in a former coal mine in Kemmerer, Wyoming, as a new technology that could redefine how nuclear energy is generated.

TerraPower’s project is “going to take multiple years,” he said.

“In terms of timeline, we’ll continue to see the non-nuclear portion be built out,“ he said. ”Once they get the approvals for the nuclear portion, we'll start to see construction on that as well. That’s going to be a very interesting project.”

Closer to viability, Abrajano said, are Maryland-headquartered X-energy’s Xe-100 advanced reactor development at a Dow manufacturing plant in Seadrift, Texas, and two developments commissioned by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), its Clinch River project and August pact with Google and California-based Kairos Power.

“The TVA has been working very closely on the Clinch River Project with a couple of partners,” including Ontario Power Generation and Poland-based Synthos Green Energy in developing a standard, replicable design for GE Vernova Hitachi’s BWRX-300 SMR, he said.

“Ontario is likely going to be the first commercial deployment for that technology,” Abrajano said. “But I would imagine that the Clinch River Project for TVA won’t be too far behind.”

In this photo provided by Tennessee Valley Authority, Scott Hunnewell, vice president of the utility’s New Nuclear Program, signs the construction permit application to build a small modular reactor in Chattanooga, Tenn., on May 19, 2025. Tennessee Valley Authority via AP

TVA became the first U.S. utility to contract for SMR-generated electricity when it agreed to buy 50 megawatts—enough to power 35,000 homes—by 2030 to power Google data centers in Montgomery County, Tennessee, and Jackson County, Alabama, from Kairos’s Hermes 2 Plant being built in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

The SMR projects are based on different reactor technologies, but all are “early-stage concept projects” supported under DOE’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program designed to advance “maturing the technology to a preliminary design phase for potential demonstration in the 2030s,” Abrajano said.

“The DOE is putting billions of dollars into those projects, but there’s also significant investment from the private side,” he said.

According to Abrajano, TerraPower, X-energy, Kairos, and others are “matching dollar-for-dollar whatever they’re getting” in federal commitments—a signal to the industry that “de-risks” investing in new technologies.

“Ultimately, these projects are going to be multi-billion dollar projects, but they are really the very first projects that we’re going to see deployed in this country,” he said. “I’m very excited about that.”