TerraPower plans to begin construction this summer at a coal plant site near Kemmerer, Wyoming, on a project that is currently expected to be the first commercial advanced nuclear facility in the United States. Although TerraPower's reactor is not expected to be operational until 2030, Wyoming began paving the way for the company as early as March 2020, when Republican Governor Mark Gordon signed a bill allowing small modular reactor capacity to replace coal capacity. In 2022 and 2023, the state passed laws streamlining the deployment of advanced reactors and approved up to $150 million in matching funds for the deployment of a range of energy technologies.

"Wyoming has done an excellent job in supporting the deployment of advanced nuclear energy," said David Terry, president of the National Association of State Energy Officials, in an interview.

Wyoming is an early mover in advanced nuclear, but industry experts point out that other states are catching up. Christina Chizmadia, senior director of state government affairs and advocacy at the Nuclear Energy Institute, said state legislatures considered about 200 pro-nuclear bills in 2023 and about 130 so far this year. "In the past, maybe only five to ten state bills would mention nuclear energy each year," Chizmadia said in an interview.

Beyond Wyoming, Michigan and Virginia are also at the forefront of the resurgence of nuclear interest in the United States. Michigan invested $150 million last year to support Holtec's restart of the recently shuttered Palisades power plant, a project that subsequently received a conditional loan commitment of $1.5 billion from the U.S. Department of Energy. Virginia's recent pro-nuclear moves include state funding for energy "career clusters" and the establishment of a state-supported energy laboratory that could facilitate the deployment of advanced nuclear reactors near abandoned coal mines.

Terry said these states' efforts provide a roadmap for policymakers elsewhere to help attract emerging nuclear technologies and the skilled workforce they require. "There are no regional voters, only state and local voters," he said. "So states need to develop state-specific policies to create jobs and attract investment within their own borders."

Four paths of state nuclear policy

Chizmadia said state nuclear policy typically takes one of four complementary forms:

Repealing moratoriums and advanced nuclear regulation

Since 2016, six state legislatures have lifted freezes on new nuclear facilities, and bans remain on the books in ten states. Chizmadia said Hawaii and Rhode Island could lift their nuclear bans this year. Betsy Smith, an environment, energy, and transportation policy expert at the National Conference of State Legislatures, said in an email to Utility Dive that state legislatures may also need to update regulations to allow specific advanced nuclear demonstration projects to proceed as planned.

Including nuclear in clean energy standards

Chizmadia said several states have recently enacted or expanded clean energy standards that include nuclear, rather than remaining silent on it or explicitly excluding it. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute's state policy tracker, these states include Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Utah.

Exploring nuclear development

This is the broadest and most active category currently, encompassing state-commissioned and funded technical feasibility studies, working groups, and stakeholder committees. Recent and ongoing examples include Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, and South Dakota, among others. "Some of these states don't have existing commercial nuclear plants and want to see if nuclear is viable," Chizmadia said.

Financial support or incentives

Chizmadia said some states have committed significant funding to nuclear, far exceeding the relatively modest costs of nuclear feasibility studies. Michigan's $150 million support for the Palisades restart is the most significant commitment to a single nuclear project in the past few years. But other states, including Virginia (up to $10 million), Tennessee ($50 million), and Wyoming (up to $150 million in matching funds covering a broad range of technologies including nuclear), have recently enacted or proposed substantial nuclear financial commitments.

Terry of NASEO said states can lay the groundwork for a new or revitalized nuclear industry by including nuclear in clean energy standards and repealing bans. But even with tangible financial commitments from elected and appointed officials, the payoff from pro-nuclear state policies may take years to materialize, said Glenn Davis, director of the Virginia Department of Energy, in an interview.

Virginia began its "moonshot" journey in 2013 by creating the predecessor organization to the Virginia Nuclear Energy Consortium, gained momentum last year with a series of pro-nuclear laws, and now aims to have its first small modular reactor online by 2032 while "leading the nation in new nuclear development," Davis said.

The role of energy communities and industrial sites

TerraPower's first commercial reactor will be located one or two miles from the Naughton coal plant, a community with "high energy IQ," said Jeff Navin, TerraPower's director of external affairs, in an interview earlier this month. This is the first commercial advanced nuclear project to capitalize on what the U.S. Department of Energy sees as the enormous opportunity of "coal-to-nuclear"—transitioning coal communities to nuclear and other low-carbon energy technologies, a key focus for Wyoming and other states. The DOE projects that a large coal-to-nuclear project could directly create more than 100 additional jobs at the plant and indirectly support hundreds more, serving as a lifeline for energy communities in a decarbonized future.

However, David Eskelson, spokesperson for Rocky Mountain Power, which is partnering with TerraPower on the Kemmerer reactor, cautioned that the utility's consideration of other coal-to-nuclear conversions "is still in the early stages of feasibility studies and is currently uncertain." Eskelson noted that Rocky Mountain Power's resource planning process "does not select specific projects but rather chooses a mix of resource types over a 20-year planning horizon."

Nevertheless, with coal revenues declining and oil and gas prices fluctuating, Wyoming is adopting an "all of the above" mindset around energy, said Rob Creager, executive director of the Wyoming Energy Authority, in an interview. "We are a strong coal state, but the coal market faces challenges," Creager said.

Wyoming is also committed to supporting nuclear suppliers and upstream businesses around fossil-dependent communities, with the philosophy of "how to achieve nuclear 'from cradle to grave,'" he added. In August, the Wyoming Energy Authority allocated $10 million in state matching funds to support a potential collaboration between nuclear fuel and component supplier BWXT Technologies and two Wyoming companies, including L&H Industrial, a heavy equipment manufacturer headquartered in Gillette.

Using nuclear as an economic revitalization tool is also a priority for other historically fossil-fuel-dependent states, such as Virginia, where the coal-producing region in the southwest is a focus of advanced nuclear efforts. Virginia Energy Director Davis pointed to the recently announced Microsoft-Google-Nucor 24/7 clean power request for information as an opportunity for advanced nuclear in southwest Virginia. A state-funded feasibility study last year identified seven promising small modular reactor sites in the region, located on or near retired mine lands, while the state-supported Energy DELTA Lab will "deploy innovative and clean energy technologies," including nuclear, to support hyperscale data centers and low-carbon hydrogen production clusters.

Davis said that by supporting clean on-site and behind-the-meter generation, the lab's work could help reduce the need for new transmission lines in the already congested PJM Interconnection region. "This challenge is easier to solve with behind-the-meter generation," he said.

Building the nuclear workforce

Experts and officials say workforce development is a critical component of pro-nuclear state policy. Partly due to the unique skills and sometimes extensive training required for key nuclear jobs, there is "healthy competition among states in establishing these early advanced nuclear projects," and states are working to attract existing nuclear industry workers and train new workers at local colleges and universities, Creager said. "I joke with friends in other governors' offices that I'll tell you what we've done in Wyoming, but I'm not sure I'll tell you what we're doing next," he added.

Even places like Virginia—home to BWXT's global headquarters, multiple commercial nuclear plants, a world-class nuclear engineering program at Virginia Tech, and "40 naval reactors docked off the coast"—need to invest in nuclear workforce development, Davis said. He cited the state legislature's creation of an energy "career cluster" including nuclear in 2019, and the expected collaboration of the Virginia Nuclear Innovation Hub with the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Liberty University. The Nuclear Innovation Alliance expects the cluster to "support the next generation of engineers, specialists, and technicians."

Terry of NASEO said states can turn to the federal government to help develop a skilled workforce. The DOE's Nuclear Energy University Program supports "high-skill fields" like nuclear engineering, and the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act include funding for nuclear higher education, he noted. In contrast, state energy offices often take the lead in building technician-level positions, Terry said.

In states further along in attracting advanced nuclear, workforce development can be done in partnership with operators or even initiated by them. Creager said TerraPower is "as fast as possible" establishing nuclear education programs at the University of Wyoming's School of Energy Resources and multiple community colleges across the state. Navin said last month that TerraPower hopes to retain at least part of the Naughton workforce to staff its Kemmerer reactor. He added that beyond existing transmission infrastructure and water rights, the presence of skilled workers who understand the energy business was a key factor in TerraPower's siting decisions.

In southwest Michigan, the workforce synergies between previous and potential future operations at the site are even more pronounced. The Palisades nuclear facility closure affected nearly 600 employees, said Carla Cook, chief of staff at the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. Cook said many Palisades employees left the area after the plant closed in 2022, some going to work at other nuclear facilities. But now that the decommissioning process is paused, some are returning, and some have even come out of retirement to help retrain workers, she added. Like TerraPower in Wyoming, Holtec is leading workforce development at Palisades, conducting training drills in "an amazing simulator that is an exact replica of its control room," Cook said.

"Every state is different"

Wyoming, Michigan, and Virginia have all made progress in building, expanding, or revitalizing their nuclear industries, but the examples they set may not apply everywhere. In some states, policymakers remain ambivalent about nuclear. An Oregon legislative proposal to repeal a nuclear moratorium failed last year due to grassroots opposition, while an official at the Colorado Energy Office expressed skepticism about a coal-to-nuclear conversion proposal for the Comanche 3 coal generator in Pueblo, which is scheduled to retire in 2031.

"Current evidence suggests that the high cost of nuclear makes it unlikely to become a major contributor to Colorado's electricity generation anytime soon," said Ali Rosenbloom, communications manager at the Colorado Energy Office, in an email. Rosenbloom cited a recent analysis showing that Colorado's lowest-cost grid decarbonization path is "substantial wind, solar, and storage, with natural gas generation as a reliability and capacity resource."

Meanwhile, policymakers and utility officials in North Dakota are seeking to build a $1.4 billion carbon capture and storage project that would cut emissions from the state's third-largest coal plant as early as 2028—before the expected startup of TerraPower's Kemmerer reactor. "We chose carbon capture over coal-to-nuclear because we have better resources for it in North Dakota than anywhere else," said Ben Fladhammer, communications manager at Minnkota Power Cooperative, the plant's operator, in an interview, citing favorable local geology and seismic stability.

"Every state is different, and they have the right to choose," said Chizmadia of NEI. But for states serious about supporting the next generation of nuclear, she has some direct advice for policymakers: "Start planning today." "If you commit to building a reactor today, it will take eight to ten years to realize," she said.