President Donald Trump regularly rails against former President Joe Biden’s federal support for clean energy. But type of energy Trump is working to expand is nuclear, which emits no greenhouse gases.
Spectrum News recently visited the McGuire Nuclear Power Station in Huntersville, North Carolina, which has been around for four decades.
The sprawling campus outside Charlotte sits behind a thick wall of fencing, watch towers and other security measures.
“Before I came in the industry, pre-9/11, I don’t think we saw the security the same level we do now,” said McGuire operations manager John Banse.
The plant can produce enough power for more than a million and a half homes.
Inside, nuclear fission of uranium creates heat that turns water into steam, driving the turbines and generators that produce electricity. The steam is cooled and reused by water from Lake Norman next door, flowing through metal tubes.
Nuclear power plants are a common sight in the region, generating 36% of the electricity in North Carolina and 60% in South Carolina.
And soon nuclear energy could be expanding its reach to more parts of the country.
In May, Trump signed executive orders aimed to spur the nuclear power industry by speeding up reactor testing and licensing, and using reactors for artificial intelligence data centers and military bases.
The president’s embrace of nuclear is in stark contrast to his opposition to other forms of clean energy like wind and solar.
“Nuclear energy is one subject that neither Democrats nor Republicans object to,” said George Washington University physics professor Andrei Alexandru.
Provisions of the bipartisan infrastructure law signed by Biden in 2021 also sought to increase nuclear power generation. And two years later the U.S. joined more than 20 other countries in pledging to triple global nuclear energy capacity by 2050.
With memories of nuclear accidents at Fukushima and Three Mile Island, safety is often the biggest concern around nuclear power and that could pose a hurdle for nuclear expansion in some states.
Duke Energy Vice President of New Nuclear Generation Rounette Nader said the plants are safe and the benefits are widespread.
“The plants run 95% of the time, it’s carbon-free generation, it’s affordable, reliable. So it ticks all the boxes,” Rounette said.
The expansion of nuclear energy continues in North Carolina, where Duke Energy hopes to transform a coal and natural gas plant called Belews Creek into nuclear energy.
“We’ve done some analysis to look at how the workforce at a coal station can be transitioned to a nuclear station and we think we can be very successful with that,” Nader said.
The McGuire Nuclear Station is expected to be in use at least 20 more years.