WASHINGTON — As she prepares to return home after four terms in the House and one in the Senate, Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis is optimistic her home state of Wyoming is in a strong position to take advantage of growing interest in nuclear energy.

Lummis represented the state with the nation’s largest uranium deposits during her time in Congress. She announced in December she would not seek another term.

Wyoming’s nuclear ties date back to the Manhattan Project, but it is set to move beyond the export of raw material with the construction of the nation’s first next-generation nuclear facility. TerraPower, a nuclear reactor company backed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, began construction last month on a 345-megawatt reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming.

The plant, the first nuclear energy facility in Wyoming, is a next-generation project that will use liquid sodium as a coolant instead of water. The Energy Department said the simpler design of this type of reactor, paired with advanced construction methods, will make future commercial reactors faster and easier to build.

If completed on schedule, the TerraPower plant would be operational roughly a decade after its initial announcement. Lummis attributes the construction of the reactor, which was permitted under both Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, to a “sea change” that has occurred at the NRC since Trump’s second inauguration.

A member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Lummis has sponsored legislation to codify Trump’s executive orders on the nuclear industry, including one that sought to speed up the NRC’s permitting and licensing processes and another that made it the official policy of the U.S. to expand its nuclear industrial base.

Nuclear energy accounted for roughly 18% of electricity generation in the U.S. in 2025, the largest source that does not generate carbon dioxide emissions. After remaining flat for decades, power demand has increased sharply in recent years driven largely by manufacturing and data centers used for artificial intelligence.

In the short term, Lummis said, the immediate demand for constantly operating baseload power likely will be met by natural gas. But, down the road, projects similar to the TerraPower Natrium reactor would be able to meet growing demand, she said. Tech giants including Meta and OpenAI already have entered agreements to build out nuclear energy to meet their growing demand.

The U.S. is “in a race with China on AI,” Lummis said, “and China’s building way more power, including nuclear.”

Most nuclear reactors in the United States were built between 1970 and 1990, according to the Energy Information Administration, with only three brought online since 2000.

Focus on permitting changes as well

Along with NRC processing updates, Lummis said changes to the federal permitting system are necessary to bring new nuclear reactors on the grid faster. She is hopeful that Senate negotiators, including Environment and Public Works Chairman Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., and ranking member Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., will reach a deal on bipartisan legislation to overhaul the permitting system.

“I would not be confident that China has put up 30 [nuclear] plants quickly and safely,” said Lummis. “I would not be, and I’m not advocating that we try to match them with regard to standing up nuclear facilities in this country at the pace they use, but we also must stand some up at a reasonable pace that thoroughly protects the safety of our citizens.”

Lummis also commended the NRC for what she said is a continued focus on safety even as commissioners and staff work to expedite projects.

“If [commissioners] were coming in here talking about economic development and the fact you don’t need as much water as you used to, and these new technologies need a chance to endure commercial success, and they didn’t mention safety, I’d be nervous,” Lummis said. “But that’s not the case.”

Lummis was a co-sponsor of the 2024 bipartisan law known as the ADVANCE Act, which included provisions to help speed up the development of nuclear power. She hopes there is continued bipartisan support for the industry as nuclear energy develops.

The boom in nuclear also would benefit her state’s mining industry, where she said the shift from open pit to in situ recovery ensures there is little surface distance and no tailings, or radioactive waste byproducts.

She worked with Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., to support Wyoming-based DISA Technologies’ application to use its technology to remediate abandoned mine waste and recycle the uranium for domestic energy use. The application was approved during an expedited process, and the company expects to begin remediation activities on the Navajo Nation later this year.

“And with additional mining here, we are going to have to ramp up our conversion and our enrichment to power production grade nuclear,” Lummis said.

©2026 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Visit cqrollcall.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.