NRC eases foreign ownership rules, opening US nuclear sector to more investors

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has taken a major step toward loosening one of the oldest barriers in U.S. nuclear finance, a shift that could redraw who gets to fund and partner in the next wave of reactor builds. The agency’s direct final rule, published in the Federal Register on April 23, amends its foreign ownership, control or domination rules for utilization facilities to carry out section 301 of the ADVANCE Act of 2024.

If the rule takes effect as scheduled on July 7, it would open the door to investors from the 38 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and from India, subject to NRC review. That change matters because the Atomic Energy Act’s long-standing FOCD standard has blocked licenses whenever the commission knows or has reason to believe a facility is owned, controlled or dominated by a foreign entity. In a sector where advanced reactors and fuel-cycle projects can demand enormous upfront capital, that restriction has often made cross-border financing difficult to structure.

The new approach does not hand over the keys. NRC still has to make its own inimicality determination, and the agency remains responsible for protecting national defense, health and safety. But the rule represents a clear policy shift from the decades-old posture that treated foreign involvement as something to be tightly constrained rather than managed through case-by-case review.

The commercial impact could be immediate for advanced reactor developers, first-of-a-kind project sponsors and fuel-cycle firms that have struggled to assemble bankable capital stacks. Legal analyses of the rule say it can permit majority foreign ownership, and potentially even 100% foreign ownership, of licensed nuclear utilization facilities, as long as NRC approval is secured. That could widen the pool of strategic investors and equipment partners for companies trying to move designs from demonstration to repeatable deployment.

The change is not universal. The FOCD prohibition continues to apply to production facilities such as spent fuel reprocessing plants and plutonium production reactors. Legal commentary also notes that sanctions-related limits still matter, and that Türkiye is excluded under the rulemaking materials.

The direct-final-rule process leaves one more hurdle in place. If the NRC receives significant adverse comments by May 26, it would withdraw the rule; otherwise, the change becomes effective July 7. For a nuclear market hunting for faster scale-up and more available money, the decision could become one of the most consequential financing changes in years.