U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright speaking at the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History in Albuquerque, New Mexico on Tue. Feb 25, 2025. (Photo by Anna Padilla for Source New Mexico)
Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Tuesday that nuclear weapons research and advanced computing would likely be spared from federal cuts.
Wright spoke with members of the press at the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History in Albuquerque as part of his two-day tour of Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories – the first leg in a trip to visit all the U.S. facilities. The Department of Energy oversees and funds 17 national laboratories across the country.
“Are we going to slow down or pare back our research of next-generation nuclear weapons – no,” he said Tuesday morning. “Our ability to create plutonium pits and winning the [Artificial Intelligence] race, we’re not going to pull back on any of that.”
In his opening remarks, Wright celebrated New Mexico’s history in developing atomic weapons during World War II and continuing work in researching energy use for nuclear reactors.
“Now, we have a second Manhattan Project coming, which is the very fast-moving pace of AI,” he said, further adding that the technology would help in developing weapons.
“We’ve got to modernize our nuclear fleet,” he said. “The key thing about nuclear weapons is you don’t want to use them, but having reliable, robust, secure weapons is the key to keeping the peace.”
When asked by Source New Mexico what research cuts New Mexico national laboratories might face given widespread, ongoing cuts in the federal government, he responded: “At the Department of Energy, our goal is affordable, reliable, secure energy. I don’t see cuts in research here as the next cuts,” he said.
The Senate confirmed Wright, a former fracking company executive, to lead the department in a Feb. 3 vote of 59-38. Both of New Mexico’s Democratic Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján voted to confirm him. During his confirmation hearings, Heinrich asked if Wright would commit to visiting Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories, which Wright promised to do.
In comments Tuesday, Wright said development of increased computing power would change “how we develop weapons, how we counter weapons,” as well as further drug discovery and models for how proteins fold, which LANL and other national labs developed over the last two decades.
Wright said Tuesday that the “huge demand growth” from artificial intelligence will require the U.S. to increase electricity production from sources all over the map. President Donald Trump announced he wanted to fast-track power plant construction for artificial intelligence in a January executive order.
Wright said “there is no clean energy, no dirty energy,” on Tuesday ,echoing remarks he made during his confirmation hearings. He continued to say that New Mexico “has tremendous energy resources across the board,” saying the state should grow both solar and oil and gas production.
During confirmation hearings, Wright was asked about his previous comments downplaying the link between the human extraction and burning of oil and gas and extreme weather disasters.
In a 2023 LinkedIn video, Wright said there was “no climate crisis” and claimed there was “no increase in the frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, or floods despite endless fear-mongering,” which is contradicted by decades of climate research published by scientists globally and in New Mexico. Wright told Congress that climate change is “a real and global phenomenon” but also said he “stands by my past comment.”
Wright also said Tuesday his priority is “getting out of the way” and removing environmental regulations, saying they have been “overly burdensome,” and stifle innovation, in response to a media question about the 1970 federal National Environmental Policy Act, which requires the federal projects to consider human health and the environment.
“Everybody cares about clean air, clean water and beautiful outdoor recreation spaces, but NEPA has been weaponized as a tool to just stop anything new from happening,” Wright said.
In response to a question about how the agency will address the storage of nuclear waste, he said, “we have some creative ideas there, that we haven’t gone public with yet,” but did not elaborate what they were.
During his confirmation, Wright didn’t rule out restarting a federal program to dispose of waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
The effort to build federal storage for nuclear waste from power plants largely stalled after the Obama administration stripped federal funding to build the proposed Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada. Trump attempted to revive plans for Yucca Mountain in his first term, but was stymied by Congress. In the interim, other projects to build additional nuclear waste storage in New Mexico and Far West Texas have been winding through federal courts. New Mexico passed a state law in 2023 banning the storage of high-level nuclear waste storage in the state, and leaders vowed to fight the facility.
The U.S. has more than 86,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel stored at decommissioned power plants, which will only grow, according to a 2021 Government Accountability Office report.
Wright said the agency will “follow the law” for projects that already have Congressional funding from the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, but added that future project spending could change under the new administration.
“There’s unallocated funds in both of those bills as well and I think we have some opportunities to direct those towards the greatest bang for our buck,” he said.
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