The US Department of Energy closed out 2025 with two major nuclear financing commitments that are now shaping the sector's 2026 momentum. In December 2025, DOE awarded $800 million to the Tennessee Valley Authority and Holtec International to advance deployment of US small modular reactors, backing one of the furthest-along SMR development partnerships between a federal utility and a reactor technology company.
The following month, in November 2025, DOE announced the financial close of a $1 billion loan to Constellation Energy to help finance the restart of the Crane Clean Energy Center, a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. The Crane project is one of several recently shuttered or mothballed US reactors that utilities are now working to bring back online as electricity demand from data centers and other large industrial loads accelerates faster than new generation capacity can typically be built.
Together, the two awards total more than $1.8 billion in federal financing directed at nuclear projects in a roughly two-month span, reflecting the pace at which DOE moved to support both new SMR technology and the restart of existing reactor capacity heading into 2026. Congress backed the funding push further in January 2026 when the Senate passed an appropriations bill directing $1.785 billion to DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy for the current fiscal year.
These awards target reactor deployment and restart financing, distinct from the separate $2.7 billion DOE commitment directed at uranium enrichment capacity.
Source: Perkins Coie - https://perkinscoie.com/insights/update/nuclear-industry-kicks-2026-major-public-and-private-sector-announcements-0