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Deal involves Westinghouse Electric, Cameco ( CCJ ) and Brookfield

Asset

Management ( BAM )

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US President Donald Trump pushes 'energy dominance' agenda

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Government will arrange financing and help gain permits

By Timothy Gardner and Katha Kalia

Oct 28 (Reuters) - At least $80 billion of nuclear

reactors will be built across the United States in a partnership

with the U.S. government, the three companies involved in the

project said on Tuesday.

The plan represents one of the most ambitious U.S.

investments in atomic energy in decades, underscoring President

Donald Trump's "energy dominance" agenda focused on oil, gas,

coal and nuclear.

It comes as the growth in artificial intelligence data

centers boosts U.S. power demand for the first time in two

decades.

Under the agreement with Westinghouse Electric, Cameco ( CCJ )

and Brookfield Asset Management ( BAM ), the U.S.

government will arrange financing and will help gain permits for

the plants using Westinghouse reactors.

BUILDING NEW NUCLEAR PLANTS COULD BE DIFFICULT

In return, the U.S. government would be granted a

participation interest that once vested will allow it to get 20%

of any cash distributions in excess of $17.5 billion made by

Westinghouse, the companies said.

The companies did not say when the U.S. government interest

would vest, but added that the government must make a final

investment decision and enter agreements to complete

construction of the plants.

Building new U.S. nuclear reactors has been difficult as

costs have soared. The last two U.S. reactors built at the

Vogtle site in Georgia in 2023 and 2024, were about seven years

behind schedule and cost about $35 billion, more than double an

original estimate of $14 billion. No large reactors are

currently under construction.

CRITICS RAISE ISSUE OF WASTE DISPOSAL

Critics of nuclear power also point to the fact that there

is no permanent U.S. repository for radioactive waste, which

remains dangerous for thousands of years. It is currently kept

on site at nuclear plants in cooling pools and then moved into

hard casks.

Still, momentum around nuclear power is being driven by

surging round-the-clock power demand from the so-called

hyperscalers that operate massive cloud-computing infrastructure

to manage rising artificial-intelligence processing.

On Monday, NextEra Energy ( NEE/PU ) and Google struck a

deal to restart an idle nuclear plant in Iowa.

As part of the new partnership, the government may also

require Westinghouse to make a public offering of its shares, if

a participation interest vests and the company reaches a

valuation of $30 billion or more by January 2029, the companies

said.

CAMECO SHARES JUMP MORE THAN 15% PREMARKET

Cameco ( CCJ ) and Brookfield Renewable Partners ( BEP ) completed

the $7.9 billion acquisition of Westinghouse in 2023, including

debt. Brookfield Business Partners had previously acquired the

company from Toshiba Corp out of bankruptcy in 2018 for

$4.6 billion.

U.S.-listed shares of Cameco ( CCJ ) rose more than 15% in premarket

trading.

The agreement follows Trump's May executive order promoting

nuclear energy and targets a 5-gigawatt increase in reactor

capacity by 2030.

The new units will feature Westinghouse's advanced nuclear

technology.

Tech giants including Google, Microsoft ( MSFT ), and Amazon ( AMZN )

have already inked deals to source power from

next-generation nuclear technologies, such as fusion and small

modular reactors.

Constellation Energy ( CEG ) and Microsoft ( MSFT ) have partnered to

revive a unit of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania to

power Microsoft's ( MSFT ) data centers.