A nuclear-powered future? Utah leaders look to fund energy boom during 2025 legislative session.

Utah Republican leaders gaveled in the 2025 legislative session aiming to transform Utah into a nuclear powerhouse, make sweeping changes to Utah’s colleges and universities and overhaul the state’s elections.

With President Donald Trump officially in the White House, GOP lawmakers’ ambitious agenda over the next 45 days also includes taking aim at public lands, attempting to make housing more affordable, cutting taxes, shaking up Utah’s judiciary, cracking down on undocumented immigrants and deciding how to spend around $30 billion in taxpayer money.

Gov. Spencer Cox has set a target of doubling Utah energy production within the next decade. Senate President Stuart Adams went further in his address Tuesday morning and aims to triple energy production by 2050 to power data centers in hopes of placing Utah on the vanguard of artificial intelligence, couching the energy boom as a national security imperative.

To get there, Adams said Utah should be the first in the nation to have micro-nuclear reactors that, he said, could help reach the power goal — an effort that Cox has signaled he’d support.

Microreactors are “built in a factory,” Adams said during a news conference on Tuesday. “They build those over and over again. They go in our submarines. So they can be located here ... and we’re looking at locations for them to be placed in Utah.”

Sen. Nate Blouin, D-Salt Lake City, said Utah should be careful to ensure such reactor projects are economically and “technologically feasible.”

“Until you can build these at a cost that provides energy at an affordable rate, on a timeframe that actually works — not 10 or 15 years, but three, four or five years to actually build a project — I think that would be great,” Blouin told reporters Tuesday. “But for the time being, it’s really about proving it out.”

Utah has typically been resistant to nuclear power since an untold number of Utah “downwinders” were sickened or died due to exposure to radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons tests in Nevada.

Following a celebration in the House chamber that included a choir performance from West Field High School and a crowd-pleasing Pledge of Allegiance led by House Speaker Mike Schultz’s granddaughter, Schultz turned his attention to drastically overhauling Utah’s colleges and universities, aiming to cut $60 million from higher education institutions and redirect that money to programs that produce graduates to fuel the workforce.

“We can streamline operations and refocus resources where they matter most, trimming administrative costs, consolidating underperforming programs and reinvesting the savings will allow us to expand high-demand, high-impact programs,” Schultz said during his opening-day remarks to his House colleagues.

The House speaker said traditional four-year degrees “increasingly” take “five years or more” to achieve, “and the cost of that extended education can weigh heavily on students and their families.”

“At the same time, our workforce needs more engineers, nurses, teachers, mental health professionals, and more,” he said.

Schultz also blamed the federal government for letting Utah’s public lands “fall into disrepair” and said, adding those lands would be better managed by the state. The sentiment echos several recent efforts to take control of federally-owned public land, including a lawsuit that the U.S. Supreme Court last week refused to hear.

“We don’t need the federal government working against us,” Schultz said, to applause.

After the Utah Supreme Court ruled that the GOP-led Legislature could not undo citizen-passed ballot initiatives without a compelling reason and later stopped the lawmakers from trying to pass an amendment to the Utah Constitution undoing that ruling, Adams said he’ll work to stop future ballot initiatives from eroding the Legislature’s power.

“We cannot let unelected special interest groups outside of Utah run initiatives and override our republic, destroy our businesses, demean, impugn and cast aside those who are duly elected to represent their neighbors and friends in Utah,” Adams said Tuesday. “We cannot let the Utah dream die. We will not let initiatives driven by out-of-state money turn Utah into California.”

Polling has shown that Utah voters overwhelmingly want to retain the ability to run ballot initiatives. A poll conducted late last year found that nearly four out of five voters oppose giving the Legislature the ability to amend or repeal citizen-passed ballot measures.

Adams’ extended comments critical of ballot measures were met by applause from many in the Senate chamber, with Democrats — who have pushed back against Republicans’ handling of citizen-led efforts to change laws — largely abstaining.

Senate Democrats, Minority Leader Luz Escamilla said in a speech that followed Adams’, said her caucus wants lawmakers to “stop looking for reasons to divide and stay seek opportunities to unite.”

The minority’s focus, Escamilla continued, is to “ensure that every Utahn, no matter who they are, has access to those basics that create a meaningful quality of life and vision of a brighter future where every family feels secure, supported and empowered to pursue their dreams.”

In addition to the issues laid out by Adams and Schultz, lawmakers have introduced bills that would allow the use of state funds to set up a gold-based bank; make it easier for parents convicted of child abuse to pull their kids out of school; target rights of LGBTQ+ Utahs, ban fluoride from water, eliminate Utah’s universal vote-by-mail system and put the state’s elections under an appointed official, rather than the lieutenant governor, as outlined in the Utah Constitution.

As senators embark on the weeks ahead, they should reflect on why they ran for office in the first place, Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore said.

“I’m going to guess it wasn’t just to score political points or win an argument,” Cullimore told his colleagues. “Let’s remember we’re not just dealing with policies or numbers. We’re dealing with people, our colleagues, legislative staff, our constituents, stakeholders — I’ve heard even members of the media are people.”

This year’s legislative body is the most diverse in Utah’s history, though it is still overwhelmingly white and male.

Cheers echoed through the House chambers as three freshman Pacific Islander representatives — the first in the state — were sworn in Tuesday morning.

The 45-day session runs through March 7.