South Korea can help to fast-track America’s nuclear energy push, but it should be wary of US deregulatory efforts. 

The 40-year slump in American nuclear energy appears to be over. In the early 2000s, when the first flush of enthusiasm arose about a renaissance of US nuclear energy, American nuclear reactor vendors pinned their hopes on government subsidies, production tax credits, and a carbon tax to help new nuclear energy projects compete with coal and natural gas. It was unrealistic to try to attract private capital, which deemed nuclear energy too risky at the time.  Moody’s Investor Services famously rated nuclear energy as a “bet-the-farm” risk, even as late as 2013.  Involvement in nuclear construction was deemed a credit “negative.”

The American nuclear renaissance did not bloom back then, despite best efforts.

Today’s Nuclear Energy Renaissance 

Today, the landscape looks very different. Private money is excited about nuclear energy, both fission and fusion, as big tech firms seek to feed their artificial intelligence (AI) fever with nuclear energy. This is good, because even though US official rhetoric has ramped up about nuclear energy, with at least four executive orders in 2025 aimed to quadruple nuclear power by 2050, government spending (at least appropriated to the Department of Energy) on nuclear energy is down by almost 20 percent over the previous year (In Fiscal Year 2026, Congress approved $1.8 billion for nuclear energy under the Department of Energy). In lieu of US government funding, the Trump administration has sought foreign funding for the 10 nuclear power plants it is seeking to begin building by 2030. So, when the Trump administration promised $80 billion in 2025 toward the construction of large, Westinghouse-designed AP-1000s in the United States, it likely already had some investors in mind: Japan and South Korea.

Nuclear Energy Diplomacy: Investment as Leverage 

It’s no coincidence that the 2025 trade deals with Japan and South Korea included promises of roughly $80 billion in investment by each into the US nuclear sector, almost equal to the cost of 10 AP-1000s.  While these are just the appetizers for Trump’s grand vision of 400 gigawatts (GWe) of nuclear capacity in the United States by 2050, the tab for the entire nuclear meal will number in the trillions—about $4.8 trillion. Of course, these are just costs for reactors—not the full costs of a quadrupling of nuclear energy, which would include associated facilities such as enrichment, fuel facilities, and downstream transmission and distribution upgrades. The hope is probably that a few successful new power plants will encourage the private sector to invest further in rebuilding nuclear supply chains in manufacturing, capital, and expertise that have atrophied so significantly in recent years.

The driver for nuclear energy at the moment is increased electricity demand, in turn driven by the electrification of transportation and the astonishing growth in data centers to feed artificial intelligence models. While the former can proceed slowly, the latter will not. Big tech firms are hungry for electricity now. Nuclear energy will not fuel the data centers of 2030, but perhaps those of 2040, assuming electricity demand continues to rise. 

South Korea as America’s Nuclear Partner 

South Korea is facing its own pressures to make it big in AI while continuing to lower its carbon emissions. Meanwhile, the Lee Jae-myung administration is not optimistic about nuclear energy, with President Lee stating in September 2025 that “nuclear energy cannot meet rapidly rising electricity demand.”  This could possibly free up South Korea’s nuclear industry assets for joint ventures or construction in the United States (though not outright ownership, which is still illegal under US law).

The United States couldn’t ask for a better partner than South Korea in the field of nuclear power plant construction. Its recent successful projects in the United Arab Emirates stand out in a sea of cost overruns and delays in the industry globally. Last year’s resolution of intellectual property disputes between South Korean firms and Westinghouse, along with an intergovernmental agreement to collaborate on exports, should help smooth the path forward. South Korea’s complementary strengths in manufacturing and project management are two areas that are key to fast-tracking nuclear energy.

Why Speed Matters: Construction and Costs 

Why is fast-tracking important? Fast-tracking construction is key to lowering financing costs, which have tended to dominate the high-cost profiles of nuclear energy. The quicker the construction, the sooner it can generate electricity and start servicing debt. This is the major motivation behind proposals for small modular reactors (SMRs), which would rely on manufacturing components off-site in order to control costs and speed up construction.  No one has yet demonstrated the kind of modular manufacturing commercially that many say will be key to lowering SMR costs.  

Another way to fast-track nuclear energy is to shave time off front-end licensing and to reduce regulations. Although observers frequently state that the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is the gold standard globally for nuclear regulation, this may be about to collapse with the overhaul of NRC licensing by the Trump administration. In the wake of the four executive orders issued by President Trump in May 2025, the US government has eliminated the NRC’s independence, circumvented NRC licensing entirely by planning to build some reactors on Department of Energy and Department of Defense sites, and exempted new reactors from environmental review. Most recently, the administration has proposed to regulate fusion reactors as machines that produce byproduct material, which would place licensing authority in individual states rather than provide federal oversight.  Smaller changes, such as doubling the allowable radiation dose for nuclear workers, may have long-term effects. Ultimately, the “creative destruction” approach under the Trump administration may be no less than dismantling the nuclear regulatory system in the United States. 

A Cautionary Note for South Korea 

Here is where South Korea should be especially cautious. Although South Korea, like many other nuclear energy states, has adopted US practices, it should resist a watering down of its own current regulatory practices to match future US ones, lest its own nuclear reputation be tarnished. 

About the Author: Sharon Squassoni

Sharon Squassoni is a research professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, where she focuses on nuclear weapons proliferation and arms control. While in the US government, she held senior positions at the State Department, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and the Congressional Research Service.

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