DOE Chief Backs Fossil, Nuclear Push Amid Budget and Staffing Questions

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright on May 7 told lawmakers that the Department of Energy (DOE) is entering what he called “a golden era of American energy dominance,” outlining the Trump administration’s strategy to prioritize fossil fuels, nuclear power, grid modernization, and permitting reform, while positioning the U.S. to lead in artificial intelligence (AI) and scientific innovation.

Speaking before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development in his first appearance as energy secretary, Wright said the DOE’s fiscal year 2026 budget request would return the agency “to its core mission of advancing energy innovation and global competitiveness through research and development.” He also framed energy growth as essential to meeting surging demand from AI and data centers.

“My priorities for the department are clear: to unleash a golden era of American energy dominance, strengthen our national security, and lead the world in innovation,” Wright said. “A reliable and abundant energy supply is the foundation of a strong and prosperous nation. It drives our economy, safeguards our freedoms, and fuels breakthroughs that improve our lives.”

A Focus on Nuclear Energy and Fuel Strategy

During the hearing, Wright devoted considerable attention to nuclear energy, including advanced reactor deployment, fuel reprocessing, and domestic uranium enrichment.

Subcommittee Chairman Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tennessee) flagged an ongoing concern about the “urgent need” for commercially available high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU). As POWER has reported, the development of the specialized nuclear fuel material enriched between 5% and 20% has several uses in fuel for advanced reactors as well as operating reactors to boost their performance, and both the Biden and Trump administrations have championed a domestic HALEU supply chain as critical to maintaining U.S. leadership in advanced nuclear technology. Noting that Congress in 2024 dedicated $2.7 billion to developing both LEU and HALEU supply chains, Fleischmann urged the DOE to “move expeditiously” on deploying appropriated HALEU funding. Delays in establishing enrichment capabilities could jeopardize planned demonstration timelines for next-generation reactors, he said.

Wright acknowledged the funding “has not been deployed yet.” The DOE is “looking at that in detail of what’s the greatest ‘bang for the buck’—how do we deploy that money to reestablish enrichment capabilities in the U.S. owned by American companies,” he said. So far, the DOE has already taken initial steps to support HALEU development, recently allocating federal stockpiles to five American nuclear technology developers, he noted. The agency has also “put out a request for interest to companies for producing LEU in the U.S. We’ve not got back proposals yet, but we will evaluate those carefully and soon send out a solicitation for HALEU as well, looking to deploy the money you have allocated.”

Echoing past energy secretaries, Wright reiterated the significance of developing a domestic nuclear fuel supply chain. “A little less than a third of current enriched uranium powering the U.S nuclear reactors actually comes by American companies—produced in America. Two-thirds of that is imported from overseas. This is unacceptable, and this is where we are today, before we even get the growth in the nuclear renaissance,” he said.

Wright notably also addressed spent nuclear fuel (SNF) reprocessing, suggesting the Trump administration will continue the Biden administration’s efforts to advance fuel recycling as a means to address SNF from the domestic fleet of LWRs. Most SNF—an estimated 91,000 metric tons, according to Fleischmann—remain in temporary storage, awaiting final disposition.

Wright said the DOE is preparing a study “that will come out before too long on what is the appropriate way to move forward with reprocessing.” The current stalemate on SNF disposal remains a “liability” for the U.S., he said. ““This has been a mistake in our country for 50 years—coming up on 50 years,” he said. “A lot of this waste and burden right now could actually be fuel and could be of value to next-generation reactors. So, in fact, this is a resource, not a burden.”

However, Wright also affirmed support for consent-based siting for long-term SNF storage. “We’ve tried one direction—we’re going to pick a location and then we’re going to just do it,” he said. “That hasn’t worked for many decades. My desire is to do this in reverse.” He added: “If you tell someone it’s going to be here, you’re imposing it on people. Their gut reaction is: ‘No, you’re not.’ We want to try the opposite approach. We want an opt-in approach: Who would like to host a site for nuclear waste disposal?” He suggested a site could also include reprocessing facilities or other nuclear-related infrastructure. “There’s all sorts of states that want to be the nuclear state… We’ve got to change the paradigm and invite people to partner with us—to their economic benefit, at their choice.” Wright said he suspected DOE would receive “many hands raised in the air and many proposals,” and committed to working with Congress on a long-overdue integrated spent fuel management strategy that reflects best international practices.

On a broader level, Wright also stressed the DOE’s goal to bring significant private capital into the nuclear sector, particularly to support the deployment of small modular reactors (SMRs). Despite the Trump administration’s proposed reduction of $408 million in FY2026, as outlined in its “Skinny Budget” released on May 2, Wright emphasized that the administration remains committed to commercial nuclear deployment. “Our goal is to bring in tens of billions of dollars during this administration in private capital to get reactors built. And I’m highly confident we will achieve that goal,” he said.

Wright said this would include both equity and debt, and signaled deep interest from large-scale energy users such as hyperscalers and industrial firms. “We have direct grants through our nuclear energy office… to continue the advanced reactor development program,” he said. “And we will also use the Loan Program Office (LPO) to provide debt capital on top of a large equity stack—mostly from hyperscalers. The offtakers of these reactors are willing to put equity capital in there.”

At the same hearing, however, Wright acknowledged broader scrutiny of the LPO, signaling a potential reset in its oversight. “The Loan Program Office is 15 years old. In its first 15 years, it deployed a little over $40 billion towards energy projects,” he said. “We had an election in November. From the day after that election until Inauguration Day, the Loan Program Office issued $100 billion of loans and loan commitments—two and a half times what was done in 15 years—it did in 76 days. That’s extremely concerning,” he said. Wright said that’s why he is working to “assemble a top-notch team and be very careful that we do things in a responsible way.”

Overall, Wright suggested confidence that federal backing for nuclear will continue. “I’ve spent a fair amount of time in my first 100 days meeting with not just nuclear plant developers—both the big plants and the small modular reactors—but also the hyperscalers, the ultimate customers and end users of nuclear, and all of the enabling companies that are developing fuels, heat exchangers, pumps, controls,” he said. He also noted federal research laboratories, in particular Idaho National Laboratory (INL), would be “absolutely central” to the nuclear expansion, pledging to continue test reactor and demonstration work at the facility.

Grid Modernization, AI Growth, and Permitting Reform

Much of Wednesday’s hearing, however, focused on concurrent issues affecting the nation’s power sector—including its looming generation supply gap as electricity demand is set to skyrocket. In April, major grid operators raised the prospect of an impending capacity crunch, warning that the pace and scale of explosive demand—including from data centers, manufacturing, and electrification—pose a precarious misalignment with accelerating generator retirements and transmission constraints.

Lawmakers on Wednesday questioned how DOE will ensure timely generation and grid capacity additions, especially amid long permitting delays, fuel supply constraints, and the need to maintain dispatchable resources.

Wright described the rise of AI as a national strategic priority. “AI is the Manhattan Project of our time,” he said. “AI will define the future of the world, and it is essential that the U.S. leads in the development of this technology,” he said. The DOE and its national labs will bolster research and development through their “world-class high performance computing capabilities that enable fast and efficient AI research and development, including four of the world’s top 10 supercomputers,” he said.

Still, meeting projected demand will require energy system expansion on a scale not seen in decades. “We need all energy sources to power the global AI race and meet growing energy demand while also ensuring the security of the grid,” he said.

Wright warned that delay could have geopolitical consequences. “If we are lagging—if we’re behind China in AI—our sovereignty, our national defense is at risk,” he said. “It is not an option for us to get second in AI.” The solution will be to unleash “dramatic growth of American energy production” and enable the private sector to build generation at scale. “The main thing I view the department and the government as a whole is to get out of the way and to enable private businesses and enterprises to bring the hundreds of billions of dollars of capital investment that’ll be needed to lead in AI,” he said.

Fossil fuels and nuclear will be essential to that growth, he said. Natural gas “is by far the U.S.’s largest source of electricity… fast to stand up,” while nuclear offers a “huge runway” to provide dispatchable, low-carbon energy. He also pointed to coal’s historical role: “Coal is the largest source of electricity in the United States for decades and on the globe for a hundred years, and we’ve been dramatically shrinking our coal capacity when we want to grow our electricity generating capacity. That just makes no sense.”

As part of a key policy shift affecting the natural gas sector, Wright pointed to the Trump administration’s recent reversal of the Biden administration’s pause on liquefied natural gas (LNG) export permits. “We have officially ended the previous administration’s reckless pause on LNG export permits and returned DOE to regular order for reviewing and approving new permits,” he said during his opening remarks. “Since January, the [DOE] has approved applications for projects that will export more than 9.5 billion cubic feet per day of LNG.”

Still, the energy sector faces challenges, Wright acknowledged, pointing primarily to permitting as a systemic barrier. He said: “Look, our nation became great—we have gorgeous buildings like the one we’re in right now—because before in America, we built big grand things with a reasonable balance between being safe, being careful of the local environment, and making stuff happen. Now that balance has swung so far. It’s easy to stop something. It’s hard to do something. I am all in on trying to change that.” He suggested the DOE is “working to accelerate projects through permitting reform,” and called for “streamlined permitting, standardized designs, and public-private partnerships to build at the speed of national need.”

During a deeper exchange later in the hearing, Wright elaborated on why permitting reform is essential to economic growth. “It’s chilling investment in our country, which means less jobs are created, less innovation happens, and less pressure to push wages up,” he said. “If a NEPA [review] makes something last six or seven years to get approved, most things just simply won’t get built.” He also noted that DOE has already begun reforming its internal processes to cut bureaucratic delays. “I convened all the national lab directors within two weeks of my arrival in the doors to tell us: how can I help you? How can we make things more efficiently?” he said. “They gave me a bunch of lists, and we are rapidly implementing them so we can build stuff quicker and faster and remove some of this red tape.”

Hydrogen Hubs Under Review

On Wednesday, Wright also addressed concerns about delays in the funding of seven DOE-funded hydrogen hubs poised to receive $7 billion in Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) funding.

In an exchange with Rep. Frank Mrvan (D-Indiana), who asked about the Midwest Alliance for Clean Hydrogen (MachH2) hub in Indiana, Wright said DOE has not made any final project decisions. “We have made—and maybe to some people’s frustration—zero decisions on projects yet,” Wright said. “Because key to me was to get thorough data and a process—a process that was thoughtful, thorough, and deliberate.” All hydrogen hubs today “are being funded in feasibility studies,” he said. “They’re developing: What’s the economics going to be? Where’s the capital sources coming from? Where are the potential offtakes going to be at the end?” He added: “We are just looking the same way any business would look at investments. We’re looking at the legal aspects, the technology, the engineering, the market. Is there offtake agreements for these that make them viable with the market?”

Wright notably also rebutted speculation that decisions were politically motivated. He, however, reaffirmed that the DOE would support projects that demonstrate strong fundamentals. ““If it’s a project that meets—it’s got the co-financing lined up, the science, the engineering works, it looks viable, it’s got an offtake agreement—so it’s not a bridge to nowhere—it’s going to continue to go forward and be viable,” he said. “Those are the kind of things that we’re going to go forward with. We want to improve the energy system,” he said.

Wright also offered a rough estimate when asked about the timing for DOE project reviews, including those related to the federally backed hydrogen hubs. “Certainly in the next few months—by the end of this summer, hopefully before the end of this summer—we will have run through all of the four or 500 large projects that are currently in the pipeline at the DOE,” Wright said. “To me it was key to get in the right people to develop a series of processes, an independent thing that every project will go through the same thing. And we’ll get results out. But that is now rolling. People are in there. And so it’s—you know, I wish it had been last month. But to me it’s more important to get sort of the right answers because we’ve got limited amount of resources, right? We want to get the greatest bang for the buck for every resource we deploy.”

Supply Chain Gaps and Other Implications

In response to concerns from industrial states and the auto sector, Wright described critical mineral shortages as a national security issue, calling them “a priority issue for us.” He emphasized how deeply the U.S. depends on foreign sources for materials essential to energy, automotive, and grid infrastructure supply chains.

“There is a cross-agency effort in this government right now,” he said. “There’s not a day goes by—not a Saturday or Sunday goes by—that there is not a dialogue about how do we change this calculus on the ground. How do we develop the capacity of mines, of refining, of production in our country of so many of the 50 critical minerals?” he said. “We’re 100% dependent on imports for 12 of them. We’re up to 40 of them that we produce less than half of in this country,” he noted.

While Wright did not discuss tight supply chains for critical grid components, including transformers and gas turbines, he highlighted related policy shifts at the DOE. As part of the broader deregulatory agenda, he noted a rollback of home appliance efficiency standards. “This ensures that the American people can choose which appliances work best for their homes and budgets,” he said.

Democratic Pushback Over Budget Execution

At the hearing, Democratic lawmakers raised concerns about DOE transparency, staff changes, and execution delays under Wright’s leadership. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), the subcommittee’s ranking member, noted that Democrats had sent four formal letters to DOE this year regarding “the department’s actions to freeze funding to vital energy programs,” the firing of NNSA and DOE staff, and changes to university grant policies—suggesting none had received a formal response. Kaptur called the agency’s approach “chaotic” and troubling.

Wright responded that while he had not replied to most oversight letters, he has been personally accessible. “Everyone who’s reached directly out to me—I’ve jumped on the phone with, I’ve texted back,” he said. “I have not responded to the dozens of letters yet because we’re in the middle of reorganizing the department.” He also pushed back against accusations that funding was being illegally withheld.

“We have not frozen funding. We don’t have a single unpaid invoice at our department—not one. If we have an ongoing project for an existing commitment and work is being done, we’ve paid our bills—all of our bills,” he said. “We are reviewing existing projects—we’ve canceled zero so far, much to the frustration of people on the other side as well. There’s a huge deployment of U.S. funds allocated by Congress and adminsitered by the DOE. I take that responsibility deathly serious.”

Wright, however, acknowledged the need for an internal reorganization and confirmed it is underway. “People in the doors that are on the staff right now—it’s low single-digit percent” in terms of reductions, he said. “We are working on a restructuring of the department which will be a more meaningful change… and it’s almost entirely voluntary.” He added: “I’ve spent a fair amount of time on communications in this, but it’s not been my biggest dedication of time. If I was to respond to the dozens of letters I’ve got, it would be the majority of my time. I’m happy to jump on the phone at any time.”

—Sonal Patel is a POWER senior editor (@sonalcpatel, @POWERmagazine).