When it comes to nuclear power, the United States is a towering giant with amnesia.
She pioneered nuclear technology and built the world’s largest fleet of reactors. Now, those monumental relics are going the way of Pyramids and she has forgotten how to build them efficiently.
In a timely wake-up call, President Trump signed four executive orders on nuclear power in May 2025, reframing nuclear leadership as critical to energy dominance and national defense. Among other mandates, the EOs ordered construction of reactors on federal land within 30 months to power AI data centers and military installations.
These orders treat nuclear plants the way we’re currently reprioritizing shipyards: as strategic infrastructure built with urgency and purpose. The challenge now is execution: moving from policy to steel at the speed and scale America’s energy security demands.
The best model of excellence is South Korea, a country with neither uranium deposits nor a long-standing nuclear program. Between 1996 and 2016, Korea built 13 nuclear reactors with an average construction time of 56 months, or less than five years. One was completed in just 49 months. During the same period, the global average was 190 months. A 2016 study in Energy Policy found that Korea was the only country where construction costs continuously declined over four decades. In exporting its well-honed reactors, Korea is now eating America’s lunch in the global nuclear market.
Korea’s model offers the blueprint for executing America’s renewed nuclear ambition.
The Formula: Standardization, Cadence, Manufacturing, & Parallel Reviews
Korea’s success stems from four interlocking advantages that compound over time.
First, rigorous standardization. After importing reactors from Westinghouse, Framatome, and AECL through 1993, Korea selected Combustion Engineering’s System 80 design as the basis for a national standard in 1987. This evolved into the OPR-1000, then the advanced APR-1400. Korea built twelve reactors of the standardized OPR-1000 design between 1989 and 2008, steadily driving costs down throughout. The United States built 94 nuclear reactors using dozens of designs; Korea succeeded by converging on a single standard.
Second, serial construction cadence. Korea deliberately built multiple reactors per site, nearly always in pairs. This approach allowed Korea to reuse transmission infrastructure, share switchyards between units, and redeploy experienced crews directly to adjacent projects without dispersal or skill atrophy. Supply chains remained active and workforce expertise deepened through unbroken practice.
Third, domestic manufacturing capability. Korean firm Doosan Enerbility developed the capacity to forge and fabricate large nuclear components domestically. By 1985, Korean firms had also taken over construction work entirely. This eliminated foreign supply chain dependencies, stabilized schedules, and allowed tight integration between design, manufacturing, and construction teams.
Lastly, Korea’s regulatory structure is optimized for efficiency, dividing safety, security, and environmental reviews among separate bodies, enabling parallel rather than sequential approvals. This created predictability without sacrificing safety; speed and thorough review became mutually reinforcing.
Applying Korea’s Formula in the U.S.
Before 1980, the US nuclear industry resembled the Korea model in all but standardization: serial construction, domestic suppliers, and rapid approvals. We need those pillars again.
First, standardization. Rather than pursuing multiple competing designs, federal projects should select one proven design in each size range, and build those repeatedly across DOE sites and military installations for power-hungry national security functions. Taken as a cohesive federal strategy, the government can anchor a firm order book for repetitive builds that drives down costs and construction time.
Second, serial construction. Each federal site designated for nuclear construction should plan for multiple units, not single reactors. DOE cost-sharing programs could prioritize projects proposing two to four units per site. This incentivizes volume production and active supply chains, prevents workforce dispersion, and improves unit economics.
Third, domestic manufacturing. America must rebuild the industrial capacity to fabricate large nuclear components domestically. Federal incentives should target facilities that restore these capabilities. Breaking dependence on foreign suppliers stabilizes schedules and enables the tight integration between design, manufacturing, and construction that Korea achieved. These capabilities also benefit the broader defense industrial base, as they are applicable across multiple national security-related industries.
Fourth, regulatory efficiency. The 2025 executive orders and Executive Order 14300 already compress NRC licensing to 18 months for new reactors and 12 months for renewals. On federal and defense land, where DOE can utilize NEPA categorical exclusions and unified federal oversight, these timelines can compress further toward twelve months. At this pace, licensing moves at the speed of construction planning.
If regulators deliver decisions in twelve months and builders construct in thirty-six, America can build reactors with Korea’s speed without compromising safety. The administration’s directive to build reactors at military installations and DOE sites within three years creates the foundation. Success will multiply if we adapt the best of Korea’s model.
Nuclear power will finally become what it always should have been: sovereign infrastructure, deployed at industrial scale.