Trump's Nuclear Grift
From Bears Ears to Hyperscale Data Centers
Back on July 15, I wrote about Trump’s decision to reduce the public lands that are part of the Bears Ears National Monument.
Bears Ears and Grand Staircase‑Escalante national monuments in Utah have coal and uranium resources. Trump is all-in on bringing back “clean coal” but the real prize is the uranium. The Bears Ears deposits are close to the only uranium mill in the US. The White Mesa Mill (Energy Fuels Inc., NYSE American: UUUU) uranium mill sits immediately east of Bears Ears and is the only operating conventional uranium mill in the U.S., making any nearby uranium deposits especially valuable due to low haulage costs.
This matters because there have recently been proposals to use small-scale nuclear reactors to power hyperscale AI data centers off the grid. Many of these data centers are proposed to be located near indigenous and minority communities, supposedly to provide jobs, but the data centers themselves require few personnel, and the nuclear reactor jobs would require highly skilled workers. Currently, there is no active plan for disposal of nuclear waste in the United States. Nuclear waste is being held in concrete storage pools on reactor sites across the country. Leakage from deteriorating pool liners poses a threat of groundwater contamination at nuclear power plant sites.
The only general disposal site in the country was supposed to be at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. It was first proposed in 1987, approved 15 years later, and halted in 2012 after being defunded following opposition from Nevada lawmakers, voters, and indigenous groups.
The other shoe dropped today when Politico reported that a leaked White House document is seeking to have willing states process and store nuclear waste.
The Trump administration is seeking changes to federal law to allow the Department of Energy to partner with states willing to store waste generated at the nation’s nuclear reactors, according to the document laying out “legislative principles.” It has been circulating on Capitol Hill and among nuclear industry leaders.
In exchange for bolstering nuclear fuel production and storing waste, the White House indicated states could see a surge of new business, including nuclear power plants and energy-intensive data centers.
Further, the administration wants Congress to allow the federal government to “provide interim storage for reprocessing at the” campus sites, according to the draft.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright earlier this year said that 28 states had weighed in on the department’s life-cycle innovation campuses request. Utah and Tennessee both submitted proposals that included potential for waste storage and fuel reprocessing.
Bears Ears National Monument is located in Utah. The White Mesa processing mill is close to a Ute Community.
Besides Westinghouse, which Trump is bailing out with the potential Saudi reactor deal, there are four companies designing small-scale reactors for the hyperscale data center market. Companies engaging in new reactor construction include TerraPower, X-energy, Kairos Power, and Oklo.
Oklo is publicly traded, while X-Energy had its IPO on April 24, 2026. Major shareholders in Oklo include Sam Altman, Morgan Stanley, BlackRock, Vanguard, Mirae Asset, Jane Street, Susquehanna, Citadel Advisors (Ken Griffin), and State Street. Chris Wright, Trump’s energy secretary, was a director at Oklo, raising concerns that the company could benefit improperly from government nuclear permits and programs.
Major backers of X-energy include Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, Ares Management funds, Jane Street, Segra Capital Management, Emerson Collective, and OPG, ARK Invest, Point72, NGP, Stack Capital, and affiliates tied to Citadel founder Ken Griffin. The company received development grants from the Department of Energy.
TerraPower and Kairos Power are still private. Bill Gates/Cascade Investments, NV Ventures, Nvidia’s investment firm, and SK Group, the parent of semiconductor manufacturer SK Hynix, are involved in TerraPower. Kairos Power has received major DOE support through a Technology Investment Agreement under the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program.
The NYTimes has reported on the regime’s foray into nuclear energy projects, both through the Saudi deal that benefits Westinghouse and through US-based hyperscale datacenters. The Saudi deal is now involved in controversy after there was pushback from members of Congress on allowing them to enrich uranium for potential weapons development. Trump then added a new requirement for the deal that the Saudis sign on to the Abraham Accords.
There is no evidence at this point that Mr. Trump’s friends or family helped orchestrate the Saudi nuclear deal. Yet a number of the president’s allies and relatives, including members of his cabinet, stand to benefit if his big bet on nuclear power pays off. Certain investors with ties to these deals are positioned to profit, even if the delivery of large new loads of nuclear-powered electricity remains years away.
The overarching goal is to generate more electricity as the demand surges worldwide, driven by a data-center building boom and growing consumer consumption. Investors are financing traditional, large-scale nuclear power plants along with a new technical approach called small modular reactors. Others are mining the uranium needed to power nuclear plants. Some others are vying to build those plants.
In some cases, how the Trump family or the president’s allies could potentially gain from the president’s nuclear plans is straightforward. In others, no direct line can be drawn, but there are such overlapping business ties that it is hard to separate the policy decisions from the potential personal benefits.
Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., are part owners through an investment partnership in Quantum Leap Energy, which is working to develop certain isotopes that can be used as nuclear fuel at a combined small-scale nuclear powerplant and hyperscale datacenter in Amarillo, TX with a Texas-based FermiAmerica co-founded by Rick Perry, who was energy secretary during Mr. Trump’s first term and is now seeking federal assistance to build nuclear power plants in Texas. Mr. Perry did not respond to requests for comment. The deal was negotiated by Howard Lutnick’s son.
Other members of Trump’s inner circle are also investing in nuclear projects as well. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is advocating for tax money to be invested in the nuclear sector. Meanwhile, Cantor Fitzgerald, the investment bank that Lutnick headed and is now run by his sons, has helped companies in the nuclear sector to raise money, generating millions of dollars in fees. The companies include Oklo, Energy Fuels Inc and enCore Energy. Each is seeking permits, financial assistance or Trump administration contracts for its nuclear projects.
According to the NYTimes
Energy Fuels, which Cantor helped last year raise money to expand its mining efforts, disclosed in June it is slated to get a $725 million federal loan from the Pentagon.
The company — one of the top U.S. producers of natural uranium concentrate sold to nuclear plants — has noted to The Times that it began working with Cantor before Mr. Trump’s second presidency. It declined to comment.
Whatever the ultimate outcome of the Saudi deal, Westinghouse has other irons in the fire.
In October, the Trump administration announced plans to partner with Westinghouse to build $80 billion worth of its nuclear reactors across the United States, in a deal negotiated in part by Mr. Lutnick.
“Together with Westinghouse we will unleash American energy,” Mr. Lutnick said in a statement then. “This partnership embodies the bold vision of President Trump — to rebuild our energy sovereignty, create high-paying jobs, and drive America to the forefront of the nuclear renaissance.”
Blake Ruppe, a Commerce Department spokesman, said that Mr. Lutnick has complied with all requirements that he divest from his family companies. “There is no conflict of interest,” he said in a statement. “It is knowingly false to suggest otherwise.”
And of course, the oligarchs are set to be directly enriched by enrichment. Enter Peter Thiel. According to the NYTimes:
Mr. Thiel is a major investor in General Matter, a U.S. nuclear fuel company focused on producing what is known as high-assay low-enriched uranium. A giant load of new nuclear fuel will be needed if all these new nuclear power plants are built, and General Matter is positioned to benefit.
The Energy Department in January awarded General Matter a $900 million contract to build out its nuclear fuel effort. The U.S. Export-Import Bank, where Mr. Lutnick is a board member, also issued up to $4.2 billion in “letters of interest” to finance the export of General Matter’s domestically enriched uranium to nuclear operators in South Korea and Japan.
Mr. Thiel did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for General Matter said that the federal support started under the Biden administration and that the company had not engaged with Mr. Vance since he became vice president.
Let’s be clear—solar and wind facilities can power these data centers without the potential environmental hazards. Solar farms can now be designed to have agricultural understories to grow crops and reverse desertification by conserving water, reducing evaporation, and improving crop yields. But as we all know, Trump hates clean energy, especially mature clean energy technologies like solar and wind. There is so much more opportunity for huge stock market gains by hyping speculative nuclear power-related companies that are getting government funding tied to meeting the power requirements of hyperscale datacenters needed to keep the AI bubble expanding.
Personally, I want to see a cost-benefit analysis of solar- and wind-powered data centers, which can be built NOW with environmental benefits, versus the development costs of unproven small-scale nuclear reactors and their potential adverse environmental impacts, including those from mining, processing, and handling spent fuel.
And then there is the issue of whether China’s pragmatic AI models, with their lower “compute” requirements, will prevail, sticking a pin in the US AI quest for a general-intelligence model that mimics human thought processes. The Chinese approach may prove easier to keep from going rogue, as the latest AI models here just did. Just a thought…
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/27/leaked-document-reveals-white-house-nuclear-waste-plan-01012663
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/us/politics/howard-lutnick-family-ai.html