Nuclear at 70: Federal Subsidies and Regulation Did Not Work

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- March 3, 2026

“Nuclear fission is the most complicated, fraught, expensive way to boil water to produce steam to drive electrical turbines.”

What U.S. industry is at once the most subsidized and regulated by the federal government? The answer is commercial nuclear power. As a result, the 73-year-old “Atoms for Peace” program represents the most expensive failure (malinvestment) in US business. potholed with uncompleted projects and massive cost overruns with completed projects. Future decommissioning costs will add to this liability.

But hyperbole rules with this technology, and there is always tomorrow. Forget that competitive viability did not emerge in the 1950s or 1960s, and George W. Bush and Joe Biden both failed at their attempted “nuclear renaissance.” Expect the same to result from today’s interventionist energy policy.

A future post will outline the crash attempt by President Trump and DOE secretary Chris Wright to get new nuclear capacity on track. Regulatory streamlining is not enough; taxpayer largesse (grants and loan guarantees) are required. This in itself is a red flag and violation of Free Market 101.

I recently prepared a White Paper for the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), Nuclear Power: A Free Market Approach. I began that historical review with ten points, reproduced below.

Ten Points

1. Commercial nuclear fission dates from the 1950s, a time when electricity was generated by fossil fuels (80 percent) and hydro (20 percent). Today, nuclear supplies 19 percent of US generation and 10 percent globally. Nuclear fusion remains in the laboratory with little prospect of foreseeable commercialization.
2. Nuclear power is a government-enabled industry. It emerged from wartime R&D and continued under the postwar “Atoms for Peace” subsidy programs. The Price–Anderson Act of 1957, which capped liability payouts from nuclear accidents, was instrumental.
3. Rate-base treatment under state-level public utility regulation was a de facto insurance policy for utilities to commit to experimental technology. A “bandwagon effect” occurred after Westinghouse and General Electric offered performance (“turnkey”) guarantees for new reactors, but losses ended the program and transferred risk to owners and ratepayers.
4. Government subsidies incited multiple technical designs and plant-size escalation in the 1960s, all contributing to cost and construction failures in the next decade.
5. Activist regulation by the Atomic Energy Commission/Nuclear Regulatory Commission contributed to cost overruns and completion delays. Extensions of the Price-Anderson Act (1966, 1975, 1988, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2024) have kept federal regulators in charge.
6. Orders for new reactors ended in 1979, the year of the Three Mile Island accident. In response, nuclear utilities engaged in collaborative best practices that have proven effective for safety and reliability.
7. New subsidies in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 resulted in four new reactors. Two were abandoned during construction, and two entered service after multiple delays and major cost overruns (2023, 2024).
8. New subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 were designed to keep existing units in operation and encourage new-generation Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). The Trump administration is expanding this Biden administration program with grants, guarantees, and executive orders.
9. The quest for competitive commercial nuclear power has been long on promises and short on performance. Technological complexity and government policies have resulted in the worst of all worlds, with today’s situation not unlike that of the 1950s.
10. A free-market approach to nuclear policy would entail the following: Ending governmental research and development in the field. Abolishing public grants and tax preferences for the industry. Halting foreign-loan guarantees. Repealing the Price-Anderson Act in order to privatize safety and insurance regulation. Lifting all antitrust constraints on industry collaboration. Making waste storage the responsibility of waste owners. Removing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the US Department of Energy from civilian nuclear policy.

Sorry for the bad news. But the underlying fact is, nuclear fission is the most complicated, fraught, expensive way to boil water to produce steam to drive electrical turbines. 

I invite any nuclear expert or energy scholar to challenge any of the above points or to reach a different conclusion about imminent competitiveness. After all, I am energy-and-technology neutral, thus not “for” or “against” nuclear fission (or fusion) per se. May the best energies win.