Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Kathryn Huff reflects in this Q&A on the highlights of her three years leading the US Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy and the momentum behind expanding nuclear energy capacity. This article was first published by the Office of Nuclear Energy on 3 May.

What have been the high points from your time at the Department of Energy?

It's been an absolute honour. It has been a real thrill to see the bipartisan support for nuclear energy. I think my confirmation was a real signal that that was the case, even starting out.

The existing nuclear fleet: We want to keep existing reactors running, and I’ve seen Diablo Canyon stay open when it was potentially destined to close. Palisades Nuclear Power Plant has a hope of a future even though it has shut down, and they're restarting that plant very soon. With Vogtle Unit 3 and 4 coming online, it takes us from the 92 reactors or so we were at when I started, up to 93, 94. With Palisades it’ll be 95. In a different world, we could have been walking backwards instead and allowing those reactors to shut down...

...You joined the DOE from academia. What caused you to accept the job?

To be honest, it was a complete surprise that I was even being considered. It never occurred to me to work in the government. Tarak Shah, the secretary’s chief of staff at the time, said to me, "We’re in a war with the climate crisis, and we need you on the front lines". And I can't say no to that. This is a very motivational value for me that, you know, it is worth doing some public service to save the world. And we're doing nothing less. And so he got me right in the heart with that one, and I was powerless against it...

... How does it feel when you look back at the progress we've made over the past few years? Do you feel like we've made huge strides, or there's still so much left to be done?

Can I say both? I think both are true. Yes, we have made huge strides. We are now walking forward - we should be running forward, with regard to new deployments of nuclear energy. But, you know, we could be walking backwards. That shift in the direction is so important, and we're in a place where that momentum, I think, is going to stick with us. But I think there's no question in the scientific world that we're not moving fast enough to decarbonise. And so while we're moving very fast and I'm so proud of us for moving as fast as we are, we've got to move so much faster, especially when we think about the tripling of nuclear energy goal. Building 200 new gigawatts of nuclear power between now and 2050 is going to be hard, but it'll have a lot of benefits.