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Nuclear Industry Kicks Off 2026 With Major Public and Private Sector Announcements

January 27, 2026

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    Key Takeaways 

    After a busy 2025 for the nuclear power industry and its federal regulators, the opening days of 2026 have made clear that this trend is only accelerating in the year ahead. With data centers, cloud computing, and AI driving electricity demand to previously unseen levels, and hyperscalers increasingly willing to think creatively about sources of clean, reliable, baseload power, the nuclear sector—including new and existing large-scale reactor sites and innovative small modular reactors (SMRs)—is poised for a decade of rejuvenation and reinvention. To do so, however, it must capitalize on recent developments at the NRC and DOE to overcome the regulatory red tape and cost overruns that have defined the industry in recent years, while securing the trust of local communities.  

    The first hyperscaler to move forward in 2026 is Meta, which announced on January 9 that it would procure up to 6.6 gigawatts (GW) of nuclear energy in the PJM market from three different partners, Vistra, TerraPower, and Oklo. This includes signing 20-year PPAs with Vistra to extend the life of two existing Vistra-owned plants in Ohio totaling more than 2.1 GW, and to uprate the capacity of both facilities and another plant in Beaver Valley, Pennsylvania, by 433 megawatts (MW) of cumulative additional power.   

    Also in the PJM market, Meta announced a new partnership with TerraPower to fund development of at least two 345 MW next-generation Natrium reactors to generate firm power as early as 2032, along with rights to procure up to a further 2.1 GW from six additional reactors later in the decade, paired with up to 1.2 GW of built-in energy storage capacity. Finally, Meta agreed to prepay Oklo for power offtake from a new 1.2 GW Aurora powerhouse situated on the former site of the decommissioned and decontaminated Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Ohio, which served as a nuclear enrichment facility for more than 60 years, ending in the early 2000s. Oklo plans to use this funding to support buildout of this flagship facility and to support fuel procurement.   

    Together, these partnerships build on a busy 2025 by Meta and other hyperscalers, with numerous announcements of offtake agreements for new, existing, and expanded or extended existing nuclear projects. This includes Meta’s 20-year PPA with Constellation for 1.1 GW of power from the Illinois Clinton Clean Energy Center (announced in June 2025); Amazon’s 1.9 GW deal with Talen Energy for nuclear power from its Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, facility (also announced in June 2025); and Google’s October 2025 announcement of its agreement with NextEra to restart and procure power from the previously decommissioned Duane Arnold facility in Iowa.   

    Taken together, these offtake agreements and investments in the nuclear fission industry, most of which will not come into effect until the first half of the 2030s, represent a clear calculation by some of the largest and most valuable technology companies in the world that the surge in demand for reliable energy and capacity that defines the current moment will extend well into the next decade. It is also a sign that GW-scale stable, reliable baseload is worth enough to these data center and AI operators that they will take a chance on new and untested SMR technologies and the kinds of larger-scale reactors that have run into extended and expensive regulatory and supply-chain delays.[1] 

    Part of the calculus for these new investments may be an emerging and seemingly bipartisan commitment to the nuclear industry at the federal level. After the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act created Zero-Emission Nuclear Power Production Tax Credits (aka 45U credits) for existing nuclear plants[2] and new incentives for SMRs, the Trump administration has doubled down on nuclear energy—a rare area of consensus and continuity.   

    The Trump administration’s support for nuclear energy has taken multiple forms and is closely connected to its prioritization of AI and data center buildout as a national security priority. On May 23, 2025, President Donald Trump signed four Executive Orders (EO) aimed at reinvigorating the American nuclear power sector, with a focus on speeding the permitting process for new reactors. Since then, DOE has sought to co-locate large AI data center complexes and new generation sources on federal lands, with an emphasis on using existing federal nuclear sites to build out new nuclear generation. Additionally, President Trump issued EO 14270 on April 9, 2025, directing certain agencies, including the NRC, DOE, and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), to enact new rules to “sunset” many older regulations to streamline permitting and other processes for industry.[3]

    In its most recent action on January 8, 2026, the NRC promulgated sunsetting rules pursuant to EO 14270[4] and established a default one-year sunset date for certain federal nuclear regulations on January 8, 2027, unless those rules are extended on a case-by-case basis by the NRC before that date following a public comment period. Most NRC regulations, including all those relating to its core statutory missions of protecting public health and safety and providing for the common defense, will remain unchanged by the new sunset rule. A number of duplicative and obsolete rules, however, such as those governing gaseous diffusion plants, which have been inoperable for decades (and are part of DOE’s plans to upcycle new nuclear sites), are now slated to be removed from the Federal Register early next year. Additionally, consistent with recent U.S. Supreme Court guidance in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the NRC has targeted for removal a handful of regulations that are not directly grounded in statute, such as a rule stating that only written interpretations of NRC regulations issued by the NRC’s general counsel are binding on the commission.   

    One rule that was proposed for sunsetting attracted significant public comment and ultimately was reversed by the NRC upon publication of the direct final rule. The Aircraft Impact Assessment Rule was implemented in the wake of September 11, 2001, and requires each applicant to construct a new nuclear reactor in the United States to evaluate the impact of a large commercial aircraft colliding with the facility and to implement design features to keep the nuclear reactor and spent fuel areas cool and contained following such an impact. 

    Insights 

    • Although efforts by the administration, NRC, and DOE to streamline regulations may bear meaningful fruit for nuclear project developers, permitting will remain a critical challenge. This is especially true for SMRs and other advanced nuclear technologies that lack an established permitting pathway for regulators to follow. Even as tech giants jockey for offtake from new nuclear projects in the coming years, project timelines will not leave much room for delays around permitting and financing, which are often issues for first-of-a-kind technologies. Additional hurdles may arise for projects built on federal DOE sites, where a history of nuclear activity and contamination may complicate both permitting and construction, and where environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act will proceed under new and untested DOE implementing procedures published in June 2025. New technologies that require design approval by the NRC also face uncertain timelines, even with the administration’s clear intent to move quickly. Accordingly, both nuclear project developers and AI and data center operators looking to partner with them must consider the risks associated with delays, especially in the context of hyperscalers who cannot accommodate significant delays to powering up new co-located facilities.  
    • FERC is currently very focused on the issue of interconnecting data centers behind the meter at existing generation sites. DOE has directed FERC to expedite rulemaking asserting jurisdiction over large load interconnections to the transmission grid. For developers and operators of large load sources like data centers, the ability to efficiently interconnect with large, co-located generating resources varies significantly by market and is often a black box with few published rules for interested parties to follow. With the recent surge in interest, this is beginning to change, as regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs) explore a variety of new mechanisms to fast-track critical new generation—such as MISO’s new Expedited Resource Addition Study process—or pair generation and load for study.
    • In an era increasingly defined by global instability, issues may arise regarding future nuclear fuel procurement, especially given that as much as 40% of global uranium supply continues to be sourced from Russia, with roughly another 17% coming from China. DOE clearly recognizes the challenge this represents and has announced a $2.7 billion investment in strengthening domestic uranium enrichment capabilities over the next decade. Even so, given the long time-horizon of the investments and PPAs under consideration, some inescapable risk exists with respect to future cycles of reactor fuel procurement. In light of this, both large load offtakers and nuclear operators will need to negotiate who bears the risks associated with the costs of fuel procurement, when those costs are incurred, and who bears the risk of cost increases associated with procuring fuel from nations free of sanctions in an evolving market.  
    • For projects connecting new load centers with restarted or uprated nuclear reactors, additional important nuances will exist in certain markets, such as MISO or PJM, where offtake must be “sleeved” through a local utility. Some of these utilities have small existing footprints and customer bases that make the addition of a new GW-scale data center a significant portion of their overall demand. This, in turn, introduces new risks for parties around RTO/ISO market participation, transferring power via the RTO/ISO markets, and managing financial carry costs, given the potential for large pricing impacts to load serving entities that buy from the market to serve their load and have to balance the timing of payments from the customer with the timing of settlements with MISO or other system operators for both demand and power. Extended nuclear reactor outages, such as for a refueling cycle or maintenance, are typically longer in duration than other kinds of resources that smaller utilities deal with, presenting unique challenges to supply power and capacity during these outages.
    • Although firm, reliable power supplying data center demand is a principal benefit of procuring power from a nuclear generator, common contracting concepts for firm power resources can create accounting challenges for offtakers. Specifically, offtakers must craft provisions around the impacts of a failure to deliver that do not create a notional quantity of power expected for each measurement period—which is more challenging to achieve with a firm resource than renewable intermittent resources—while still providing comfort to the offtaker that they will get the power that they need. Crafting PPAs that have appropriate teeth without creating a notional value requires careful balancing.  
    • Finally, where generation sources like SMRs sign behind-the-meter PPAs co-located with load before the load is served by the grid (i.e., islanded for some period of time pending system upgrades), generators often seek capacity payments for that behind-the-meter generation, which can raise lease accounting concerns for buyers.  

    Endnotes

    [1] For example, Georgia Power’s Vogtle facility reactors finally came online in 2023 and 2024, more than seven years and almost $20 billion overbudget.  See, e.g., Georgia nuclear rebirth arrives 7 years late, $17B over cost. 

    [2] See Zero-Emission Nuclear Power Production Credit. 

    [3] President Trump followed this EO with four additional EOs designed to speed up the approval processes for nuclear reactors and to remove other barriers to developing the domestic supply of nuclear energy. More information can be found in our May 2025 Updates here and here. The NRC issued guidance pursuant to EO 14300 on December 8, 2025, enabling future NRC license applicants to receive NRC licensing efficiency benefits from prior DOE or Department of Defense (DOD) authorizations for certain reactor designs that have been tested and have demonstrated the ability to work safely, in part through voluntary pre-application engagement with NRC staff. NRC staff would serve as observers, with their role limited to asking questions to increase understanding of the key concepts of the design and would be encouraged to share observations with DOE/DOD.

    [4] The NRC also stated in its discussion of the new rule that it found the sunsetting of obsolete rules to be warranted independent of President Trump’s EO. 

    The information provided is not intended to be a comprehensive review of all developments in the law and practice, or to cover all aspects of those referred to.
    Readers should take legal advice before applying it to specific issues or transactions.

    Editorial Disclaimer

    Originally published before the Ashurst Perkins Coie combination. See disclaimer.

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