With no reactors under construction, the restarts offer the most immediate options to grow nuclear power in the U.S. Opposition to the restarts, and nuclear power in general continues, but it’s lost the clout it once had to block and delay projects.
he Trump administration has announced it is loaning NextEra Energy as much as $1.9 billion to support the restart of a nuclear power plant in Iowa.
The project is one of three projects underway to restart nuclear power plants that have been shut down. Besides support for two of those restarts, the Trump administration in its announcement last week said it has provided support for the development of new nuclear power plants and advanced reactor technology.
While opponents of nuclear energy had the clout to block or delay nuclear power development and construction of plants, President Donald Trump’s expansion of nuclear energy hasn’t been met with much pushback, and it’s generally enjoyed bipartisan support, suggesting that a decades-long opposition to nuclear energy may be fading into history.
Shift in opinions
The shift in public opinion toward increasing support for nuclear energy began during the Biden administration, according to multiple polls.
Nuclear energy as a share of total U.S. electricity generation grew from 2.4% in 1971 to 20.1% in 1992, and it’s hovered around that figure ever since. Only three commercial reactors have gone into service in the last 30 years, the latest being two new units at the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia, which came online in 2023 and 2024.
The 1979 partial nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island, in Pennsylvania, and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster near Pripyat, Ukraine, eroded public confidence in nuclear energy’s safety.
In 2011, the Fukushima disaster released large amounts of radioactive materia into the atmosphere and the Pacific Ocean. Though it caused no deaths, like the Three Mile Island incident, the accident helped buoy opponents’ arguments that nuclear energy is unsafe.
However, nuclear has seen public opinion growing more favorable in the several years as concerns about climate change make carbon-free electricity attractive, and the intermittency of wind and solar continue to drive up electricity prices and lower grid resilience.
A Gallup poll from April found that the percentage of Americans who think more emphasis should be placed on producing domestic energy from natural gas, wind and solar declined, while the percentage who feel the same about nuclear energy increased.
The 2026 National Nuclear Energy Public Opinion Survey released in May found that 77% of respondents favor nuclear energy, a record high. That was up from 49% in 1983. A 2025 Pew Research Center poll also found growing support for nuclear power.