By Tim McLaughlin and Timothy Gardner
(Reuters) -A huge nuclear deal announced by the Trump administration earlier this week provides a multi-billion-dollar incentive for the U.S. government to issue permits and approvals for new Westinghouse reactors – an unprecedented structure that critics say poses environmental and safety risks.
Under the agreement with Westinghouse Electric’s owners, Canada-based Cameco and Brookfield Asset Management, the U.S. government will arrange financing and help secure permits and approvals for $80 billion worth of Westinghouse reactors.
In return, the plan offers the U.S. government a path to a 20% share of future profits and a potential 20% stake in the company if its value surpasses $30 billion by 2029.
The deal is one of the most ambitious plans in U.S. atomic energy in decades, underscoring President Donald Trump’s agenda to maximize energy output to feed booming demand for artificial intelligence data centers.
But the financial incentives risk clouding regulatory scrutiny aimed at preventing nuclear accidents, according to safety advocates and regulatory experts.
“The things that could go wrong are Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima,” said Greg Jaczko, a former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, pointing to three of the worst nuclear power accidents on record.
“All have causes tied to insufficient regulatory independence.”
The White House said concerns about safety were unfounded.
“The regulatory regime remains the same and is not compromised. There’s nothing in the deal about regulatory changes,” the White House said in an emailed statement.
Westinghouse owner Cameco declined to comment. Brookfield and Westinghouse did not respond to messages requesting comment.
TD Cowen analysts told clients in a research note this week they expect Westinghouse to have 10 new large-scale reactors – enough gigawatts to power several million homes – under construction by 2030 as a result of the deal.
Typically, it takes around a decade for a new nuclear power plant to get built, largely due to the rigorous permitting requirements and enormous costs and complexities associated with construction.
Patrick White, a nuclear regulatory and technology expert at the Clean Air Task Force, said effective regulation did not need to be a slow or extended process and there were benefits to moving more efficiently.
“Ensuring that nuclear regulation is also timely and predictable is in the best interest of both companies and the public,” White said.
Todd Allen, a nuclear expert at the University of Michigan, said the design of Westinghouse reactors is well established, but questioned how fast projects could progress.
“With that aggressive timeline, and demand for the reactors around the world, I wonder if there is a big enough workforce to handle all of these projects,” Allen said.
DELAYS TO PREVIOUS U.S. PROJECT
Westinghouse’s last U.S.-based nuclear project, building two nuclear reactors at the Vogtle power plant in Georgia, forced the company into bankruptcy protection in 2017.
The two reactors were about seven years behind schedule and cost about $35 billion, more than double the original estimate of $14 billion.
Patty Durand, director of nonprofit Georgians for Affordable Energy, has spent years analyzing that project and said she fears fast permitting would overlook the risks associated with climate change.
She said severe droughts have forced operators to curtail nuclear power in Europe and the United States to avoid overheating their reactors.
Westinghouse also had a slew of problems related to the modular design of its AP1000 reactors, such as some parts’ dimensions being wrong when they arrived on site. The AP1000 would also be used for the new reactors, built from prefabricated parts and assembled on site.
Edwin Lyman, a physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said he fears the Trump administration will exert too much power over the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to get the new reactors permitted.
“If the White House fully takes over the NRC and it is no longer at all independent, then it could be used just as a tool for sweeping deals for which the White House could accelerate licensing on its preferred projects regardless of their actual safety implications, and that’s a dangerous thing,” Lyman said.
(Reporting By Tim McLaughlin and Timothy Gardner; Editing by Nia Williams)
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