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Wright Tells The National News Desk Gas Prices Are the Lowest in Years and Describes the Genesis Mission

December 18, 2025 · U.S. Department of Energy · 0:05:45

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

What happened

Energy Secretary Chris Wright joined The National News Desk as the program reported gasoline prices at their lowest in years, with more than half the country seeing prices under $3 a gallon and Americans projected to save over half a billion dollars on gasoline during Christmas week compared with the previous year, as the program stated the figures. Wright tied the trend to the administration’s production agenda, saying energy is the infrastructure of the economy and that the agenda is to drive prices down and wages up, as he stated the goal; he also cited the rollback of appliance rules he described as forcing buyers into more expensive, worse-performing dryers and water heaters, as he characterized the regulations.

On nuclear power, Wright said the administration is restarting nuclear plants, easing permitting for new ones, and stopping coal plant closures, and argued the grid would face blackouts had the closures proceeded, as he presented the case. He said nuclear is essential both for energy security and for artificial intelligence because it runs when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing, as he put it.

Wright also explained the Genesis Mission: data centers built on national laboratory land by large technology companies will provide computing power worth billions of dollars to the labs’ roughly 40,000 scientists and engineers, to speed discovery in areas he listed as cancer cures, fusion energy, new materials and grid management, as he described the initiative. He argued nuclear is the one alternative to oil, gas and coal that can become a large share of the global energy system, while wind and solar, being intermittent and land-intensive, were a pathway only to higher prices, as he stated his assessment.

Why it matters

The year-end interview bundles the administration’s affordability claim — sub-$3 gasoline across most of the country — with its two structural bets: a nuclear restart and an AI-for-science mission built on laboratory land and private compute.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright Joins The National News Desk - December 18, 2025”, 2025-12-18 (official upload, embedded above; published 2025-12-18). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.