The U.S. Department of Energy detailed continued momentum behind the country's nuclear power expansion in a July 2026 update, highlighting new reactor restarts, criticality milestones, and grid capacity targets. The agency's Utility Power Reactor Incremental Scaling Effort, known as UPRISE, aims to add 2.5 gigawatts of nuclear capacity to the grid by 2027 and 5 gigawatts by 2029, a timeline officials say moves new capacity online years faster than most other generation sources.
Four privately developed advanced test reactors reached criticality between June and July 2026, including Antares Nuclear's Mark-0, Valar Atomics' Ward 250, Deployable Energy's Unity, and Aalo Atomics' Aalo-X, all hosted at Idaho National Laboratory or partner sites. DOE officials say the results establish design baselines that could allow several of the projects to begin producing electricity as soon as 2027.
The department is also backing the return of previously shuttered plants to service, including the 800-megawatt Palisades station in Michigan and the 835-megawatt Crane Clean Energy Center in Pennsylvania, both financed through the Office of Energy Dominance Financing. In June, the department issued a conditional loan commitment for long-lead supply chain items tied to 10 new large-scale reactors nationwide, a step officials say could shorten construction timelines by up to three years.
Together, the initiatives reflect a broader federal push to expand nuclear generation capacity as electricity demand climbs, particularly from data centers and industrial users.
Source: U.S. Department of Energy — https://www.energy.gov/articles/fact-sheet-golden-era-american-nuclear-energy-has-arrived