APRIL 16, 2025

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In Cipher this week: 

• Cat Clifford writes about the nuclear industry eyeing a revival under Trump.
• Anca Gurzu sees some giant wind turbines up close.
• Cat also delves into where the U.S. gets its uranium.

 
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Send your energy photos, story tips and more to news@ciphernews.com.

Illustration by Nadya Nickels.

With Trump's support, nuclear energy eyes a revival

BY: CAT CLIFFORD

“America’s nuclear energy renaissance starts now.”

So said Chris Wright, secretary of the United States Energy Department, in late March. He was announcing his agency had relaunched a Biden-era program to award $900 million in support of new small modular reactors.

Earlier that month, the Energy Department also announced it was disbursing an almost $57 million loan to restart a nuclear power plant in Michigan.

Amid its high-profile embrace of fossil fuels, the Trump administration is also backing nuclear energy, a carbon-free and steady source of power with enduring bipartisan support. The commitment is coming at a key time for the sector, which has been hamstrung by high costs, atrophied supply chains and dwindling workforces.

In calling for a nuclear renaissance, Wright, a fracking executive who was also a member of the board of nuclear innovation company Oklo until he joined President Donald Trump’s cabinet, echoed a long-standing, yet-to-be-realized goal of the industry.

For decades, the nuclear sector struggled to rebut public concerns over safety following high-profile accidents. But the tide of public opinion is shifting as understanding of the technology has grown. Indeed, nuclear is one of the safest ways to produce electricity.

Still, the share of the nation’s electricity that comes from nuclear energy has remained relatively flat at about 18%, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Now, though, surging electricity demand, Trump’s focus on “energy dominance” and backing from a slew of deep-pocketed tech companies like Google and Amazon are all giving the industry momentum it hasn’t seen in decades. Existing plants are being extended or restarted and new nuclear-reactor technologies are on the way.

“We can do this. We just have to put our minds to it and make it a priority,” said Daniel Poneman, former CEO of Centrus Energy, a nuclear fuel company and a former deputy secretary in the Energy Department.

Wright’s renaissance will require reestablishing those supply chains to fuel, build and staff the reactors.

“All of this has to be well choreographed and planned,” said Jacopo Buongiorno, a nuclear science and engineering professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

For example, a company making component parts for a reactor will not ramp up production until it sees enough orders on the books to justify doing so.

Tariffs imposed by the Trump administration could be “most likely bad news” for new nuclear plants because, like all large construction projects, they require a lot of concrete and steel imported from other countries, Buongioro said.

Read this article and share it on Cipher’s website.

Lunchtime Reads and Hot Takes

China Halts Critical Exports as Trade War Intensifies — The New York Times
Cat’s take: The minerals are critical for the construction of many special magnets, including those needed for the energy transition. For example, rare earth magnets are used in building electric vehicles.
 
Bank Climate Group Says Strategy Pivot Wins ‘Overwhelming Support’ — Bloomberg
Bill’s take: The rules are less strict, with many turning into suggestions and few milestones. But the group did emphasize the industry’s role in financing green technology and the energy transition.

EU plan to end Russian oil and gas imports due out in May — Reuters
Anca’s take: Not all EU countries will agree with the move. Ironically, one of the tools experts suggested the Commission use is imposing tariffs on imported Russian gas.

Trump looks to radically reshape power plant oversight — and boost coal — Canary Media
Bill’s take: The series of executive orders Trump signed do more than simply juice coal use, but also assure it keeps getting used even when other options are cheaper and available.
 
BP faces shareholder backlash over U-turn on green strategy — Financial Times (subscription)
Anca’s take: Legal and General, a top 10 investor in BP, said it was “deeply concerned” about BP’s decision to pivot back to oil and gas and away from a radical investment in renewables.
 
Google, PJM unveil AI plan to transform electric grid — E&E News (subscription)
Cat’s take: So often the conversation around AI and energy focuses on how much electricity will be needed to power data centers, which is absolutely an issue, but AI can also drive energy efficiency.
 
UN passes landmark carbon levy on ships, defying US threats — Financial Times (subscription)
Bill’s take: The body ignored U.S. threats but passed a low fee. An interesting sign that decarbonization is continuing more or less as before Trump: progressing but nowhere near fast enough.
 
Cambridge, UN pension scheme back novel climate-focused bond index — Reuters
Anca’s take: Most of the money bank-rolling the expansion of fossil fuel production comes from loans and bonds, many issued by private or state-owned firms, Reuters writes.

More of what we're reading:

• US judge blocks Trump's freeze on climate, infrastructure grants — Reuters

• EU expects to add record renewable capacity in 2025, industry sees headwinds — Reuters
• Why a Plane-Size Machine Could Foil a Race to Build Gas Power Plants — The New York Times
  
  

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Behind the scenes: moving massive wind turbines

Rows of nacelles are stacked in Port Esbjerg, Denmark, on April 6, 2025. Photo credit: Anca Gurzu.

BY: ANCA GURZU

ESBJERG, Denmark — We all know wind turbines are big, but you can’t get a real sense of their size until you see them, and their various components, up close and in person. And when you do, it’s hard not to be amazed and humbled by what it takes to build and install them.

That was my experience earlier this month during a trip to Western Denmark and Port Esbjerg, the country’s largest port and where four-fifths of Europe’s offshore wind capacity is shipped from.

Various wind turbine parts, including blades, tower sections and nacelles (the top segment of the turbine containing the generator and gearbox), were stacked row upon row across the port, like giant Lego pieces waiting to be put together. (Fun unrelated fact: Lego is a Danish company with headquarters about an hour’s drive from this port). Housing such large components, the port itself is also huge — 4.5 million square meters, or larger than New York’s Central Park.

Some of the components are destined for the United States but have been on standby in the port due to project delays on the other side of the Atlantic. Their status may now be even more uncertain in the wake of the sweeping import tariffs recently imposed (then partly paused) by President Donald Trump, who also has negative views on wind energy.

The waiting is expensive for everyone involved. Wind turbine manufacturers like Vestas or Siemens Gamesa rent space from the port authority to store their giant components, making delays pricey.

I listened to port officials talk about geopolitical uncertainties and the volatility of the market while riding past wind blades so massive they made people look tiny by comparison. It was another reminder why such trips are important: they help me understand how what I write about from my desk actually exists in the day-to-day realities of people and companies.

The press trip was organized by the European wind lobby group Wind Europe on the sidelines of its annual summit in Copenhagen.

From the several “wow” moments I had while in Denmark, seeing a wind blade the length of about 12 passenger cars transported on national roads was definitely a highlight. For me, it was quite an unusual sight, but I quickly discovered it’s a regular occurrence for local drivers. Case in point: most roundabouts in the region were modified so that trucks could pass straight through them since the blades are too big to make the circular turn.

Another highlight was stepping onto the Wind Osprey, a 520-foot (160-meter) vessel that installs wind turbines offshore. The bridge of the ship looked almost like a scene from a science-fiction movie with so much navigation and control equipment. The international crew of about 80 people lives on the ship for four weeks at a time, so they try to make it feel like home. It even has two cinema rooms!

Despite its mission to install green energy, the Wind Osprey ironically uses a lot of dirty fuel: about 40 tons per day when at sea. Crew members said they hope to be able to use cleaner fuel in the future.

Read this article and see more pictures from Anca’s trip on Cipher’s website.

The U.S. imports virtually all its uranium for nuclear power

Source: United States Energy Information Administration, Preliminary production data for 2024.

BY: CAT CLIFFORD

The United States imports 99% of the uranium concentrate it needs to make fuel for its nuclear reactors — but that could be changing.

The country’s 54 nuclear power plants produce about a fifth of all U.S. electricity. Most of the uranium they use is imported from Canada, Kazakhstan, Australia, Russia and Uzbekistan.

But domestic uranium production has recently grown due to technological developments that have brought U.S. mining costs down. At the same time, the fallout from the war in Ukraine, increased interest in nuclear technology and soaring electricity demand globally are increasing the appetite for reviving domestic nuclear fuel supply chains.

In 2024, domestic supplies of uranium concentrate increased more than 13 times, rising to almost 677 thousand pounds from just under 50 thousand pounds the year before, according to preliminary estimates from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. (The rise isn’t visible in the above chart because the numbers are preliminary, and EIA hasn’t yet released numbers for imports yet.)

Uranium is exempt from the wide-ranging tariffs put in place by the Trump administration on April 2, according to documents released by the White House. The tariff situation is continuing to evolve, however.

The U.S. has been importing most of its uranium concentrate beginning in the 1990s, but in earlier decades, it was the opposite, as shown in the color switch in the chart above.

“We were the number one producer in the world in 1980,” said Scott Melbye, the president of Uranium Producers of America, an industry trade group, and CEO of the Uranium Royalty Corp, a uranium investing company.

But U.S. production started to lag as mining of large, high-grade uranium deposits in Saskatchewan, Canada ramped up in the 1980s and state-owned mining operations in Kazakhstan took off in the 1990s. Uranium from both places was cheaper than mining in the U.S. at the time.

Concurrently, a nuclear disarmament agreement between the U.S. and the newly formed Russian Federation repurposed highly enriched uranium in Soviet nuclear weapons for use in U.S. nuclear reactors.

“That became one half of U.S. supply of nuclear fuel for 20 years,” said Daniel Poneman, former CEO of Centrus Energy, a nuclear fuel company, and a former deputy secretary in the Energy Department. “And since nuclear is one fifth of our power, I used to tell people one in 10 light bulbs in America used to be a bomb pointing at you.”

Then after the 2011 tsunami and nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan, many countries started scaling back their nuclear footprints, leading many Western mining outfits to mothball their operations. Meanwhile, state-owned mining in Kazakhstan, unincumbered by the need to be profitable due to government backing, doubled down on production. Russia also continued flooding U.S. markets with cheap uranium after the disarmament agreement ended in 2013.

Now, world events may change this dynamic.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompted a U.S. ban on Russian uranium, to be phased in over several years, with a full-stop by 2028. The ban, combined with nuclear’s renewed popularity in the U.S., is restarting domestic uranium operations.

Newer mining techniques are also making U.S. deposits cost competitive again, said Melbye, noting that at least six member companies of the trade group he leads have restarted their U.S. operations.

AND FINALLY...
Windy living

Anca Gurzu took these photos of a "tiny house" in Copenhagen, Denmark. The house is made from part of a wind turbine that generated energy in Austria for 20 years before being converted into a living space. Swedish energy major Vattenfall wanted to show how wind turbine components can be reused. The re-configured nacelle is fully equipped with a kitchen and bathroom, as well as a heat pump and solar panels. This nacelle is 13 feet (4 meters) wide, 33 feet (10m) long and 13 feet (3m) high, but more modern ones are bigger.

Each week, we feature a photo that is somehow related to energy, the thing we all need but don’t notice until it’s expensive or gone. Email your ideas and photos to news@ciphernews.com.

Editor’s note: In addition to supporting Cipher, Breakthrough Energy also supports and partners with a range of entities working to tackle climate change, including nonprofits, corporations, startups and research firms. For more information on Cipher’s editorial policy, click here.