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Wright at the Reagan National Economic Forum: More Than a Dozen Reactors Under Construction Under Trump

June 11, 2025 · U.S. Department of Energy · 0:08:15

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Energy Secretary Chris Wright spoke at the Reagan National Economic Forum at the Reagan Library in a conversation recorded May 30, 2025 and posted June 11, according to the Department of Energy’s recording. Wright said a free-market energy policy — government out of the way, with simple permits to move, import and export energy — produces more energy and lower prices, keeps manufacturing and blue-collar jobs in the United States, and follows what he called the Reagan approach of freedom bringing prosperity, in contrast to four years of top-down control that he said sent jobs abroad.

On the four nuclear executive orders President Trump had just signed, Wright said the United States built over 100 nuclear power plants in the three to four decades after the Manhattan Project, but only about three since the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was created, and that bureaucracy stifled the industry. He said the administration is streamlining the regulatory framework, using national lab land, technology and reactor test facilities to help private companies advance designs, and applying creative financing driven by private capital. He predicted the nuclear ball will be rolling under this administration, with more than a dozen reactors under construction while President Trump is in office, as he stated the expectation. He said 85 percent of reactors built in the last twenty years are Chinese or Russian, including plants built abroad, and that partner countries should be using American technology instead.

Wright also discussed his Warsaw address to Central European nations, where he invoked Reagan’s “time for choosing” to argue they need not finish shutting down the coal plants that were their dominant electricity source on the EU’s timetable, and could push back toward energy freedom. On AI, he said the private sector supplies the dominant capital and innovation this time, with hundreds of billions of dollars to be invested during President Trump’s term, but warned the regulatory framework must let the energy be built to power it, as he made the case.

Why it matters

The Reagan Forum appearance is where Wright put a number on the nuclear revival — more than a dozen reactors under construction this term — and tied it to the permitting and financing machinery the department has been assembling since January.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: Wright’s May 30, 2025 prediction of more than a dozen reactors under construction during President Trump’s term is a checkable claim flagged for the scoreboard editors, with no verdict entered here.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright Joins Reagan National Economic Forum to Discuss U.S. Energy - May 30, 2025”, 2025-06-11 (official upload, embedded above; published 2025-06-11). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.