President Joe Biden is guiding United States energy policy in directions designed to meet his stated goals of a “100-percent ‘clean electricity grid’” by 2035 and net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, a baseload bias that radiates across the entire federal regulatory and rule-making circuitry.

Yet, despite carbon-free nuclear power providing nearly 20 percent of the electricity produced in the United States and having the capacity to produce much more, the administration continues to downplay nuclear power as a key component in achieving its 2035 and 2050 aims.

Nuclear power generates half the carbon-free electricity in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), but the Biden administration’s proposed Fiscal Year 2024 budget request cuts nuclear power development by more than $210 million, or 12 percent, from this year’s $1.77 billion budget, and nearly $100 million from two years ago.

The most recent confirmation that carbon-free nuclear power is not the carbon-free energy the administration supports is the exclusion of uranium by the Department of the Interior (DOI) from the United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) updated “critical minerals list.”

The listing is considered pivotal to reviving the nation’s uranium mining and enrichment industries, which have atrophied since the Russians flooded the global market with predatorily priced ore and processed fuels beginning three decades ago