The U.S. power grid is entering a period unlike any it has experienced in decades. Rapid electrification, domestic manufacturing, and the exponential growth of artificial intelligence are reshaping electricity demand. A recent report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, projects that data centers alone could account for between 9.5% and 15.3% of total U.S. electricity consumption by 2030. More broadly, U.S. electricity demand is projected to grow by approximately 15% to 20% by 2035—roughly 80–110 GW of firm capacity—underscoring the scale of new generation that will be needed. Against this backdrop, executives across the utility, independent power producer, industrial, and technology sectors are making investment decisions that will shape the grid for decades.
Safety is foundational to any nuclear project and is subject to rigorous review by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). But the commercial and execution risks utilities must weigh extend well beyond safety: reactor design, constructability, supply chain readiness, licensing progress, workforce depth, operability, performance, and reliability.
Advanced reactors are often discussed as a single technology class, yet the commercial and execution risks associated with individual designs differ substantially. As these technologies move toward commercial deployment, evaluating them requires a more comprehensive assessment of their technology, deployability, and commercial merits—and, importantly, the extent to which each design reduces or eliminates risk across multiple dimensions over the full project lifecycle. That assessment begins with three structural questions.
How Capital-Efficient Is a Technology Over Its Full Lifetime?
Capital efficiency is more than the magnitude of overnight capital cost (OCC). It encompasses how effectively capital is deployed and the capital intensity over time—especially before the commercial operation date (COD)—as well as post-COD costs: fuel, refueling outages, major projects and refurbishment, labor and other operations and maintenance (O&M) expenditures, and ultimately decommissioning. OCC offers only a partial view, since financing costs can account for a significant portion of total project cost. A smaller, simpler, faster-to-build design may achieve superior unit economics compared with higher-output designs that initially project a lower $/kW, once financing and schedule are considered. This amplifies the importance of long-lead materials, supply chain certainty and resilience, workforce and learning effects, and constructability in determining overall project cost and capital exposure.
Utilities should also examine how fundamental reactor design choices affect both construction and lifecycle costs. Designs with high inherent safety that employ passive safety features—placing the plant into a safe condition through the natural laws of physics rather than relying primarily on active systems or operator intervention—can reduce reliance on multiple trains of active primary and backup safety systems. Where these characteristics reduce equipment requirements and system complexity, they have important implications for project cost as well as ongoing O&M and refurbishment over the plant’s operating life.
Operating pressure is another fundamental consideration. Technologies that operate at or near atmospheric pressure can reduce the need for the extensive high-pressure-rated vessels, piping, valves, pumps, actuators, and associated systems that high-pressure designs require—reducing the quantities of commodities and specialized materials needed for construction, along with construction complexity, duration, and exposure to supply chain constraints. These benefits extend beyond pre-COD capital to the full post-COD cost profile.
Finally, designs that operate at higher temperatures also achieve greater thermal conversion efficiency, producing more electricity from a given quantity of thermal energy.
Taken together, inherent and passive safety characteristics, and low-pressure, high-temperature operation, provide important opportunities to simplify plant design and improve capital efficiency throughout the project lifecycle. Utilities should evaluate not only projected OCC, but whether a design’s fundamental characteristics translate into measurable reductions in equipment, construction complexity, financing exposure, and lifecycle cost.
How Resilient Is the Fuel Strategy?
A fuel strategy is only as robust as the supply chain behind it. Over the next 25 years, governments around the globe are targeting approximately 1,500 GWe of nuclear additions. This growth will test the nuclear supplier ecosystem, particularly in capital-intensive areas requiring long-term planning—chief among them fuel supply and fuel preparation or fabrication capacity.
Nuclear fuel production consists of four key steps: mining and milling, conversion, enrichment, and preparation or fabrication into a reactor-ready fuel form. While some advanced technologies use standard low-enriched uranium (LEU, <5% U-235) consistent with the global legacy fleet, most require high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU, generally 15% to 20% U-235), for which no mature, at-scale commercial market comparable to standard LEU exists today.
Fuel requirements also vary significantly by reactor technology. Some advanced designs require specialized fabricated fuel forms and associated manufacturing infrastructure, potentially increasing manufacturing complexity, cost, and supply-chain risk. For conventional nuclear fuel, fabrication can represent roughly 15% to 20% of total front-end fuel-cycle costs—with potentially higher shares for advanced fuel forms requiring specialized manufacturing. In contrast, technologies that can use standard enrichment levels while simplifying subsequent fuel preparation, or avoiding complex fabricated fuel forms altogether, reduce dependence on new manufacturing infrastructure and can reduce schedule, cost, and supply uncertainty.
Fuel is therefore more than a procurement issue; it is a strategic business and lifecycle risk. A resilient fuel strategy requires assessing the maturity, robustness, scalability, and cost of every critical step from ore to core reactor-ready fuel. Utilities should consider not only if sufficient fuel can be obtained for initial operation, but whether the complete supply chain can reliably support decades of operation and expansion to a multi-unit fleet. Fuel constraints can become both a project bottleneck and a significant supply-chain vulnerability over the life of the asset.
How Mature Is the Regulatory Engagement and Progress Toward Licensing a Design?
Regulatory status should not be viewed simply as a licensing milestone. It reflects years of technical engagement, regulatory review, and the progressive resolution of technical and safety questions. Understanding where a technology stands today—and, importantly, how much regulatory risk has already been retired—provides valuable insight into the certainty of the path ahead.
The NRC has spent the past decade modernizing its regulatory framework to better accommodate advanced reactors. This includes Part 53, a risk-informed, principle-based, technology-inclusive alternative licensing framework focused on demonstrating required safety outcomes rather than relying exclusively on prescriptive requirements developed principally around legacy light-water reactor technologies. The regulatory process remains rigorous, but these efforts provide additional pathways and greater regulatory clarity for utilities evaluating future advanced reactor projects.
Utilities should therefore look beyond whether a developer has simply entered the licensing process. Instead, evaluate the depth of regulatory engagement, the significance of milestones achieved, the technical issues that have already undergone regulatory review, and the extent to which the regulator has reached conclusions on important aspects of the underlying technology. The relevant question is not how long a developer has been engaged with regulators, but how much uncertainty remains before a project can proceed through licensing and deployment.
As utilities prepare to meet unprecedented growth in electricity demand, evaluating advanced reactors will require understanding the implications of fundamental technology choices across capital efficiency, nuclear fuel supply, and regulatory maturity. Advanced reactor technologies may share a common label, but they do not share the same commercial, supply-chain, or regulatory risk profile. By asking the right questions early—and examining how much risk a technology has actually eliminated—leaders can better distinguish technologies positioned for successful commercial deployment from those that continue to carry substantial execution risk.
—Sarfraz Taj is vice president of Business Development with Terrestrial Energy.
