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Gen. John Kelly reflects on his time in the first Trump administration<\/p>\n
Gen. John Kelly served in the White House during the first Trump administration, employing a nonpartisan approach to help the president lead.<\/p>\n
Japanese leaders are investing up to $40 billion in small nuclear reactors in Tennessee and Alabama through a 2025 deal reached with the Trump administration.<\/p>\n
The deal is part of a trade agreement that commits Japan to a $550 billion total investment in the United States. Japan also will invest in natural gas generation, a key energy interest<\/a> of Trump’s.<\/p>\n Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi announced the agreements during her visit to the United States<\/a> last month. GE Hitachi, which is partnering with the Tennessee Valley Authority on the Clinch River small modular reactor project<\/a> in East Tennessee, is listed as the project operator in fact sheets about the investments on the White House and U.S. Department of Commerce websites.<\/p>\n “The groundbreaking commercial deployment of the advanced SMRs in the U.S. will serve as a next-generation stable power source, stabilizing electricity prices for\u00a0the\u00a0American people and strengthening the U.S. leadership in global technological competition,” commerce department officials said in a fact sheet.<\/p>\n TVA estimated the cost of a 300-megawatt small modular reactor at $5.4 billion<\/a>, according to information in the utility’s 2025 draft Integrated Resource Plan. Small modular nuclear reactors are a fraction of the size of giant plants that require huge cooling towers.<\/p>\n TVA serves almost all of Tennessee but only the northern part of Alabama, which hosts the utility’s oldest and most powerful nuclear plant: Browns Ferry in Limestone County. The plant produces about a fifth of the utility’s total generating capacity. TVA also owns an unfinished nuclear plant in Hollywood, Alabama, near Huntsville.<\/p>\n New reactors could position U.S. to gain global ground on energy, senator says<\/p>\n The $40 billion investment represents a broader sense among Japanese officials that Tennessee’s energy business is on the upswing, according to U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty. Hagerty, a former ambassador to Japan, said in remarks in Oak Ridge on April 2 that Japan’s business community is pleased to return to Tennessee.<\/p>\n “We can deliver here in an incredible way,” he said. “We want to be on the forefront. We want to be on the cutting edge.”<\/p>\n Hagerty, who serves on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, said he was deeply involved in the trade deal.<\/p>\n “The investment is something I’ve been trying to nurture for a long time \u2012 since before I was ambassador,” he told Knox News. “The Japanese see the strategic value beyond just the economic impact. There’s a national security component to their desire to invest in America.”<\/p>\n That value is tied to Japanese and American competition with China, Hagerty said.<\/p>\n Since taking office as a senator, Hagerty has been a proponent of speeding nuclear development, especially in the Volunteer State. At times, he’s criticized TVA’s leaders as moving too slowly on nuclear projects. In a 2025 op-ed piece published in POWER Magazine, Hagerty and Sen. Marsha Blackburn, both close allies of President Donald Trump, called for a new board to direct TVA<\/a> and an interim CEO from outside the utility to lead daily operations, citing among other things the pace of nuclear progress.<\/p>\n Shortly after the piece was published, Don Moul<\/a>, who’d been TVA’s chief operating officer, was appointed the utility’s next CEO, and Trump fired several board members, leaving TVA without a quorum for months<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mariah Franklin reports on technology and energy for Knox News. Email:\u00a0mariah.franklin@knoxnews.com. Signal: mariahfranklin.01<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gen. John Kelly reflects on his time in the first Trump administration Gen. 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