The Break Through

Washington, D.C., September 30, 2026 — The Breakthrough Institute is proud to support the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026, led by a bipartisan group of Senators including Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Martin Heinrich (D-NM).

Washington, D.C., September 29, 2026 — The Breakthrough Institute celebrates the progress Senators Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Martin Heinrich (D-NM) have made toward a bipartisan permitting reform agreement. As we eagerly await legislative text, the Breakthrough Institute applauds the negotiators’ persistence.

WASHINGTON, DC, September 29, 2026 — Today, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a construction permit to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) for a BWRX-300 small modular reactor at the Clinch River Nuclear Site in Tennessee—the first construction authorization for a commercial small modular reactor in the United States. The NRC completed its review in 14 months—four months ahead of schedule—after concluding that TVA’s application met applicable safety requirements.

Berkeley, CA — August 28, 2026 — Today the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA APHIS) deregulated an American Chestnut tree genetically engineered for resistance to the blight that decimated the population of these trees in the early 20th century.

Large infrastructure projects are governed by distributed decision systems: configurations in which multiple independent stakeholders—each with distinct mandates, evaluation frameworks, and definitions of acceptable risk—must simultaneously reach acceptable outcomes within their own domains. No single actor controls the result. No single intervention is sufficient to produce success.

Under the direction of Executive Order 14300, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is reconsidering one of the foundational principles of the federal radiation protection system: that radiation exposures and releases be maintained “as low as is reasonably achievable,” commonly known as ALARA. The Commission has proposed replacing ALARA with a “graded approach to dose management” and revising several numerical standards governing radioactive effluents.

Washington, DC — July 24, 2026 — The Breakthrough Institute endorsed the Wildfire Emissions Prevention Act (WEPA) of 2026 led by a bipartisan group of Senators. This legislation would simplify regulatory compliance for states conducting prescribed burns. These and other proactive fuel reduction treatments aim to reduce wildfire intensity and severity. The bill would classify prescribed burns as exception events, excluding smoke from these wildfire mitigation efforts from Clean Air Act calculations.

Jul 22, 2026 Share Share via Twitter Share via Facebook Share via Email California’s wildfire architecture is breaking on three sides at once. Electricity rates have risen 70 to 80 percent since 2018, driven in large part by utility wildfire mitigation and insurance that ratepayers now finance directly. The FAIR Plan—the state’s insurer of last resort—has nearly quintupled in policy count and dollar exposure over the same period.

Congress designed the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) in an era of breakneck federal infrastructure development. But now America struggles to build. The NHPA Section 106 consultation framework functions well for routine undertakings. But it scales poorly for large, multi-state transmission lines, pipelines, and other linear infrastructure. This paper argues that the most persistent challenges in Section 106 review arise from three structural features of the current system.

Evaluating Deployment, Investment, and Impact in America's Clean Energy Future Jul 1, 2026 Share Share via Twitter Share via Facebook Share via Email This interactive tool from The Breakthrough Institute brings together two distinct analyses of nuclear energy in the United States. The Map and Dashboard tabs visualize results from a 2022 modeling study of advanced nuclear deployment through 2050.