The Florida Public Service Commission, which regulates investorowned utilities, received a new assignment during the 2024 legislative session: investigate the feasibility of advanced nuclear power technologies for the state and report back.
This spring, the commission delivered a 72-page study on all things nuclear. Its findings spanned emerging nuclear tech and how to encourage such projects in Florida. Meanwhile, President Trump signed an executive order in May to rapidly deploy advanced nuclear technologies in hopes of quadrupling the country’s nuclear capacity by 2050.
Why is nuclear power — created when the cores of atoms are split apart — a hot topic in the energy world? Justin Watson, a nuclear engineering researcher and associate professor at the University of Florida, has a few guesses.
The low-carbon power source can create enormous amounts of energy with very little starting material, Watson says, making it an attractive option to fuel power-hungry industries like data centers and desalinization facilities. It’s also seen as an opportunity for energy independence.
Florida currently has four nuclear generating units — two at the Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station south of Miami, and two at the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant near Port St. Lucie. Each unit is a Generation II reactor, and all are owned by Florida Power & Light. (Generations III+ and IV are considered advanced nuclear reactors.) Altogether, they supplied about 11% of Florida’s electricity in 2024.
Among the challenges with bringing more nuclear energy to Florida, aside from its radioactive waste, are the high costs associated with manufacturing and constructing nuclear power plants.
Watson points to the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia that hosts the country’s largest nuclear power plant and its only advanced nuclear reactor design in commercial service. The plant’s two newest units — both Gen III+ tech — came online in 2023 and 2024. The same advanced reactor design already has been approved for construction and operation in Florida.
But their price tag is enough to make Godzilla tremble. The project’s original budget was around $14 billion. After lengthy and expensive construction, its final cost sat around $35 billion. The Pennsylvania-based company behind the venture, Westinghouse Electric Co., filed for bankruptcy in 2017.
“The U.S. sort of lost its ability to build these plants because we haven’t done it in so long,” Watson says. “There’s a lot of cost overruns, and it becomes very expensive, which makes people more and more nervous about investing in new nuclear power.”
That’s where small modular reactors, or SMRs, could come into play.
SMRs produce 350 megawatts of energy at most. One-tenth the size of traditional nuclear reactors, they’re designed to be modular, standardizing their manufacturing and assembly while lowering their overall costs. In May, North Carolina-based GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy announced the approval of the West’s first SMR at a power plant in Ontario.
Microreactors, which produce up to 50 megawatts of energy, are another option. They’re designed to be portable, small enough for a tractor-trailer to haul.
The PSC suggests more studies about potential nuclear development in the state, new funding mechanisms for deploying advanced nuclear reactors, and a workforce development program for the sector.