The Trump administration plans to issue $17.5 billion in loans to support the development of 10 new large nuclear power reactors, with the hope that the reactors will be under construction by the end of the decade and operational by the mid-2030s.

This was a key goal laid out by President Donald Trump last year in his plan to quadruple domestic nuclear capacity by midcentury to support surging energy demand brought on by increased manufacturing and data centers running artificial intelligence.

On Tuesday, the Department of Energy announced it was issuing the conditional loan commitments to finance five eligible projects for the procurement of long-lead-time items needed to build large nuclear power plants.

It marks the second-largest project taken on by the agency’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing since the loan office completely overhauled its portfolio and canceled nearly $30 billion in loans for clean energy projects finalized under the Biden administration.

The new nuclear funding, which has been described as American Nuclear Supply Chain Loans, will specifically finance special-purpose vehicles backed by both utilities and energy companies that will lead the development of the new reactors.

Each project must develop two large-scale reactors able to generate more than 1 gigawatt of electricity. For comparison, the city of San Francisco is estimated to require around 1 gigawatt of electricity during peak load.

“Just over one year ago, President Trump directed the Energy Department and its agency partners to unleash the next American nuclear renaissance,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a statement.

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