On Wednesday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright stated that there will be “either credit guarantees or debt that’s provided” by the government to nuclear power projects, but “We’ll be out of that business in three, four, five, six years. This is just to get an industry started again.”
Co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin asked, “Mr. Secretary, when you think about loaning money to private enterprise, and we have big conversations in this country now about industrial policy and the role of the government, the role of business, how do you see that in this context?”
Wright answered, “Well, the government smothered nuclear power over the last 4 or 5 decades. We put it at an unfair competitive advantage by an overarching regulatory regime that was not focused just on safety, it was on safety and bureaucracy and answering to political concerns and layering another layer. So, we took an industry that started so strong in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s and smothered it. So, I’m a capitalist, but what the government needs to do is give nuclear a fair playing field again, which is reform of the regulatory regime, re-establish the nuclear supply chain in our country, and bring private capital back into nuclear power. And there’s huge interest for private capital to come back in. But the early-moving projects, Andrew, will have a government either credit guarantees or debt that’s provided. We’ll be out of that business in three, four, five, six years. This is just to get an industry started again.”
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