People still smoke indoors at the bar in Atomic City, Idaho, population 52. The walls are plastered with one dollar bills and a Don't Tread On Me flag.
"Where were you Monday?" bar and nearby race track owner Vickie O'Haro asks one of her regulars.
O'Haro knows her customers orders without asking: cold beers or shots called atomic bombs — fitting since most of her customers work down the road at Idaho National Laboratory, or INL, America's nuclear energy testgrounds since 1949.
A March Gallup poll shows a majority of Americans still oppose a nuclear energy plant in their area, but that's not the case here
" I live 10 miles away, and I'm fine," O'Haro said. "I'm not glowing in the dark, you know? There's nothing to be scared of."
After stalling out for decades, nuclear power is having a moment. President Donald Trump fast-tracked new projects, and now a new generation of small nuclear reactors is poised to come online in the next few years.
Three companies at INL — and one in central Utah — switched on new types of reactors this summer.
" I think it's actually pretty cool to be happening in my backyard," O'Haro said.
Zoom out and INL is a pretty big backyard. It's 900 square miles of remote, sagebrush-filled high desert, almost the size of Rhode Island.
Electricity demand is skyrocketing
And it's in an unassuming building here that one startup, Deployable Energy, recently took its test reactor "critical." That means it had a sustained chain reaction for the first time, proving the design works and could someday generate electricity.
Lance Maul, chief operating officer at Deployable Energy, described this as a "real moment in history for the nation."
"This could be a real turning point for the energy future," said Maul, who has an Australian accent and was sporting a scraggly beard and a man bun.
He said the goal isn't your 20th century reactor: massive, expensive nuclear plants. It's micro reactors, which could power a thousand homes versus a million.
"It's something deployable," Maul said. "it's something that you can put on the back of a truck. It is a fundamentally different proposition."
Nuclear optimists like Maul see a future where these reactors are mass produced and power remote communities, military bases and AI data centers. They see them as a solution to meet America's rising energy demand without emitting carbon.
Trump is also a fan. Last year, the Department of Energy sped up reactor permitting. NPR reporting has shown that means getting rid of hundreds of pages of regulations, without telling the public.
Looser federal regulations
"I have no confidence in the Department of Energy and its oversight of this at all." said Edwin Lyman, Nuclear Power Safety Director at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
He said he worries about reduced standards around radiation, security and environmental contamination.
Plus, according to ProPublica reporting, the federal commission that oversees commercial nuclear development has lost hundreds of staff, especially safety experts, due to cuts by the Trump administration and resignations. Companies now testing their reactors will seek approval from that commission.
"I don't think cutting corners when you're talking about nuclear safety is a good idea," Lyman said. "I'm concerned about its impact on the communities around INL"
But at the bar in Atomic City, where lab workers drink after a long day, O'Haro said she's not worried.
" If we weren't safe, my guys would tell me that we weren't safe." she said, before turning up the country music playing in the background.
A majority of Americans oppose new nuclear plants near them, but polling also shows growing support for the U.S. "emphasizing" nuclear power more broadly.
Copyright 2026 NPR
