The pace of new nuclear construction in the US may soon change. Utility planning documents call for 10 to 12 gigawatts (GW) of new nuclear capacity by 2040. In addition to these planned (although not yet started) builds, federal and state projects and hyperscaler announcements, taken at face value, would add another 30-plus GW of demand for new nuclear reactors in the same period.

For an industry that has built just 3.4 GW over the past 20 years, this collective ambition represents an extraordinary potential step change.

But in our discussions with executives, this ambition frequently raises two urgent questions: Will the supply chain and workforce be ready? And where are the opportunities and risks?  Across the industry, owners; OEMs; engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) firms; suppliers; investors; and policymakers broadly recognize the criticality of supply chain and labor topics to successful nuclear projects as well as the opportunity for investment associated with potential new builds in the US.

To this point, the industry has lacked visibility on how potential nuclear demand might translate into national demand for critical components and labor types. Suppliers are reluctant to invest in nuclear-qualified capacity without firm demand signals. Owners are reluctant to commit without confidence that supply of components and workforce will be there.

That’s why the Nuclear Scaling Initiative (NSI) has built the first version of Project Clear (coherent long-range estimates and analysis for readiness). The report, authored by NSI with support from Bain and Solestiss, puts forward a national component and labor supply and demand model for the US nuclear build-out that translates developer plans into category-level demand outlooks. The goal: Provide a resource that supports suppliers in confidently building out capacity and that supports owners in taking the actions required to de-risk their nuclear programs, considering national demand and supply trends.

The first step was constructing an aggregate bill of materials for the industry: a year-by-year view of component and labor demand built from public data on the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor bill of materials. The AP1000 public bill of materials was used as a proxy for general nuclear supply chain needs; over time the intention is to add other reactors to the tool to enhance fidelity. 

From a demand standpoint, a national view of potential nuclear demand was built based on planned capacity from utility planning documents (i.e., 10 to 12 GW), which represents the most certain of all potential demand (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

Next, readiness and scalability of the domestic and allied industrial base were assessed across roughly 40 critical supply chain and workforce categories. Each was evaluated on two dimensions—the severity of its current capacity constraint and the practical difficulty of scaling supply—and classified into one of four archetypes (see Figure 2).

Key findings

On components, the allied industrial base is likely sufficient to support a 10 to 12 GW build-out by 2040. However, large-scale reactor pressure vessels (zero to two US reactors per year of current capacity), steam generators, and turbine generators are gating constraints with long lead times, and procurement decisions will need to be made well ahead of the final investment decision to avoid bottlenecks.

On labor, the challenge is larger: The pathway could require more than 30,000 direct construction workers annually at peak, with notable shortages expected in nuclear-critical crafts (pipefitter welders, quality control inspectors), trades facing intense competition from data centers and liquefied natural gas (electricians, instrumentation and controls technicians), and experienced leadership roles with no fast-track substitute, making difficulty of scaling supply capacity very high. Supply readiness and scalability alone do not guarantee execution quality; categories such as reactor island concrete and structural steel have historically driven costly delays through build quality and rework issues, not material shortages.

The underlying demand-supply models, detailed tear sheets for each component and labor category, and the full assessment framework are available through the Nuclear Scaling Initiative for industry participants to access and review.

Implications across the ecosystem

For owners and developers, the supply chain challenge will require new organizational muscles. Most utility and developer organizations do not have the internal capability to manage nuclear-grade procurement at the depth and lead times required. Procurement needs to be a core capability, not left entirely to EPC, with close oversight of risk given that the cost of project delays during construction average more than $1 million per day.

How EPC contracts are structured will also matter: The degree of owner visibility into supply chain performance, the allocation of long-lead procurement risk, and the mechanisms for workforce continuity across projects are all areas in which contract design directly affects delivery outcomes.

For reactor OEMs, risk mitigation is increasingly the key factor in technology selection.  Securing the supply chain for their reactor designs will require complex decisions around how to fund and organize supplier development, particularly for gating components in which the qualified supplier base is narrow and capacity expansion requires significant capital. It will be critical for all OEMs to demonstrate to developers that their supply chains are ready for the build.

Global nuclear energy experience offers relevant precedent: France’s fleet model, South Korea’s integrated supply chain approach, and Westinghouse’s supplier development memorandums of understanding s in Poland all illustrate different models for how OEMs have worked to build and secure industrial capacity. Lessons from other capital-intensive industries (aerospace, liquefied natural gas) on supplier qualification and pre-commitment are also directly applicable.

The ability to recruit, retain, and redeploy scarce nuclear craft and supervisory talent across projects will be a defining capability for EPCs, given their role as the traditional engine for workforce development. The organizations that can provide a clear demand signal to maintain continuity in their nuclear-qualified workforce rather than rebuilding it project by project will have a material advantage in execution.

For suppliers, the priority is scaling readiness—building credible plans now for how production capacity will scale as quickly as possible once orders materialize. Suppliers will face their own component constraints (e.g., availability of specialized tooling) and labor challenges in already tight skilled trade markets, and the firms that have thought through these bottlenecks in advance will be in the strongest position.

For investors and capital providers, these findings cut two ways. For those underwriting new nuclear projects, supply chain and workforce readiness is a first-order risk; tying capital deployment to supply chain milestones (e.g., confirmed reactor pressure vessel and steam generator purchase orders) is a practical way to stage risk.

Separately, for private equity and infrastructure funds, the nuclear supply chain itself represents a significant investment opportunity, and interest in this space is already strong and growing. The challenge is that the opportunity set is broad and fragmented, spanning heavy forgings, specialized labor services, reactor instrumentation, quality assurance, and more. Funds that develop a clear map of where supply constraints are most acute and build a focused investment thesis around those categories will be better positioned than those pursuing nuclear supply chain exposure more broadly.

Labor bottlenecks are common across every facet of the nuclear industry, and no single party will resolve them alone. Plant Vogtle 3 and 4 illustrates how a few craft-skill gaps can disrupt the critical path and boom-bust cycles are a recurring failure mode. New collaboration models must activate union pipelines, technical colleges, and industry training programs well ahead of demand, because skilled labor is a critical long-lead item to manage across the supply chain.

What comes next

Project Clear was built to support industry leaders with a common fact base about the most acute supply chain and workforce constraints to support taking action to build confidence in new nuclear programs and investment decisions. The underlying models and category details are available through the Nuclear Scaling Initiative and may be updated (including with additional reactor types) as demand signals, policy, and supply chain conditions evolve. The NSI welcomes engagement from stakeholders across the ecosystem who want to use these tools to inform their own planning and investment decisions.