Nuclear energy is a perfect example for the intersection of technology and policy that is at the heart of EPIcenter, according to nuclear and radiological engineering professor Anna Erickson.
“Nuclear power development stagnated for three decades while federal policy and public sentiment did not support it, natural gas was much cheaper and future energy demand projections were flatlined,” says Erickson, who became an EPIcenter faculty affiliate in 2025. “But the growing importance of clean energy triggered an explosion of interest to revive nuclear power about 10 years ago, with a greater sense of urgency now that data centers are becoming large new consumers of electricity.”
That explosion of interest is on display in Georgia, which already generates one-third of its electricity with nuclear power—much more than the U.S. average of 20%. Georgia Power, the state’s largest electric utility, added two units to one of its five nuclear power plants in 2023 and 2024. Vogtle Unit 3 was the first newly approved and completed U.S. reactor in 30 years.
Using normal water as the coolant, Units 3 and 4 employ the same light water reactor (LWR) design as the country’s 92 other commercial reactors while operating more efficiently and with improved safety features. Georgia Power is considering upgrades to its other reactors to help support the predicted growth of data centers.
U.S. college campuses and companies are also building demonstration projects for new designs known as small modular reactors (SMRs). They include TerraPower’s sodium-cooled Natrium reactor near Kemmerer, Wyoming, whose construction began in June 2024.
“The sodium coolant allows for a smaller core that shrinks the reactor’s footprint, illustrating the main feature of SMRs: compact, factory-produced modules that can be shipped by car or rail,” notes Erickson. “Achieving that goal would reduce current construction times of about 10 years, which is why more than 100 companies around the world are working on SMRs.”
While first-of-its-kind demonstration projects aren’t immediately connected to the grid, the Natrium reactor—a “game changer” according to Bill Gates—is designed to operate commercially eventually. However, the local community is concerned about the on-site storage of spent fuel, illustrating enduring challenges around nuclear waste management.
Almost 40 years ago, the Department of Energy (DOE) pursued a centrally managed, geologically well-suited permanent storage facility for spent nuclear fuel. But Nevada’s Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository never materialized, and all 54 U.S. nuclear power plants are storing their spent fuel on-site. The DOE is now creating a framework for consent-based siting: Companies, states and communities are exploring possible ways of hosting interim storage facilities that are as compact, secure and safe as possible.
Sweden, notes Erickson, started building an underground central repository in a remote east coast location in January 2025. Its projected completion date is 2080, but storage may begin in the late 2030s. Finland is the only country close to completing a similar permanent storage site.
Current research efforts are also going into combining nuclear and renewable energy. These two sources, says Erickson, are natural complements since reactors excel at delivering year-round 24/7 baseload electricity while solar power plants provide a flexible response to fluctuating demands. Combining the two sources could involve shared tanks of molten (liquid) salts, an efficient, battery-like thermal energy storage option.
Looking into the future, Erickson expects the naturally occurring radioactive element uranium-238 to remain the U.S. fuel of choice since all LWR and most SMR designs are based on it. Turning it into low-enriched uranium requires gas-powered centrifuges to increase the proportion of uranium-235 to 3-5%. Fission—the controlled chain reaction inside a reactor—splits the heavy nuclei in this mixture to create large amounts of energy that spin electricity-generating turbines.
Erickson also predicts U.S. nuclear energy to follow a hybrid growth model. “We already have licenses to expand our existing power plants with additional large or small LWR reactors, but we also need to develop a reliable SMR supply chain,” she says. “These parallel efforts will be critical for meeting our growing demand for clean energy.”
Some of the research projects in Erickson’s lab are funded by the Consortium for Enabling Technologies and Innovation, which she directs. All projects reflect her commitment to support the safe and secure development and expansion of nuclear power while guarding against its proliferation by bad actors. She works with more than 20 undergraduate and graduate students to explore, for example, how the grid can accommodate new large reactors, how much cooling water is needed for LWRs, whether SMRs provide enough energy to meet regional demands and which types of sensors may enhance nuclear fuel cycle monitoring.
“I’m grateful to be a part of EPIcenter because nuclear energy involves many questions I would not be able to tackle on my own, such as developing business models for combined nuclear/solar power plants or policies to support new reactor designs and improved nuclear waste management,” says Erickson. “These are truly multifaceted problems that we can best address within a larger research enterprise that emphasizes the exchange of knowledge across several disciplines.”
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Published on: October 21, 2025
Story Written by: Silke Schmidt
Priya Devarajan || Research Communications Program Manager