3 minute read | June.10.2026
Nuclear energy is back at the center of the national conversation – but what does that actually mean for the industry?
Orrick nuclear partner Amy Roma joined the Columbia Energy Exchange podcast alongside Jason Bordoff and Ashley Finan of Columbia's Center on Global Energy Policy to talk about where nuclear energy stands today – from NRC reform and project finance to fleet deployment and global nuclear trade.
The 5 takeaways:
Three forces have shifted nuclear energy’s position: climate ambition, geopolitical risk underscoring energy security, and massive data center demand. As Amy puts it, utilities used to have "all the time in the world" for energy planning – and now they don't. "Now we have huge gigawatts at a time coming online and we need the power in order to support that.”
Recent NRC rulemakings – including new licensing pathways for advanced reactors and a proposed rule leveraging DOE and DOW authorizations -- have maintained technical rigor while meaningfully improving the licensing process. The real bottlenecks are elsewhere: "Creating a financeable project where everybody takes a level of risk that they're comfortable with is the hardest thing to navigate in nuclear. It's not the NRC,” Amy says.
Countries that build fleets of similar reactor designs see massive cost reductions with each successive unit. “The problem’s not nuclear,” Amy says. “The problem is stopping after one.” Multiple companies are now building or licensing first-of-a-kind projects with order books lined up – and new regulatory frameworks for high-volume microreactor deployment are designed to support fleet-scale buildout.
Energy demand isn't a short-term problem with a short-term fix and even “fast” alternatives take time. “The waiting list for gas turbines can be six years,” Amy says. "There's very few things that can be here tomorrow that solve all our problems. So we need to take a long-term horizon."
Under the Atomic Energy Act, the U.S. needs a bilateral 123 Agreement in place before it can sell a reactor or exchange nuclear material with another country. Amy argues the debate over conditions can overshadow the bigger picture. “We confuse the issues and make it sound like countries want to pursue nuclear weapons because they don’t want to agree to an additional provision that other countries don’t insist on,” Amy says., The real opportunity is in the relationship itself – building hundred-year energy partnerships that provide durable influence over global safety and nonproliferation standards.