The Biden administration wants the United States to triple the global supply of nuclear power, with American-designed reactors running on fuel enriched in the West. The goal: Usurp Russias near monopoly on atomic energy exports, and keep China from gaining control of yet another green energy industry.

But theres one big problem: The U.S. isnt even building any more reactors at home.

After nearly 15 years of billion-dollar cost overruns and delays, the utility giant Southern Company just hooked the second of two new reactors at a power plant in Georgia up to the grid this week the only two atomic energy units built from scratch in the U.S. in decades. Developers are shopping around all kinds of novel designs for new-age nuclear plants. Yet few utilities can afford or persuade investors to put up the cash for projects that can take a decade or more to complete.

Luckily for President Joe Biden, the federal government owns a massive power utility specifically designed to deploy large-scale infrastructure that remains out of reach for the markets invisible hand. But building new megaprojects means borrowing money and Congress hasnt bothered to adjust the utilitys credit limit for inflation in 45 years.

Established almost exactly 91 years ago to electrify rural parts of the American South too poor to attract profiteering utilities, the Tennessee Valley Authority today generates and sells power to 153 local distributors that serve 10 million people in Tennessee and the surrounding region. The TVAs seven reactors, spread out between three nuclear power plants, churned out 43% of its electricity in the past few months.

The TVA functions like any other independent power company. But the New Deal-era state corporations board of directors is appointed by the White House and its shares are owned by the federal government. That makes the TVA the closest thing the U.S. has to the kind of government-controlled entity that other countries have tasked with completing their own years-long nuclear megaprojects.

France, Japan, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Poland and Ukraine all use government ownership to build and operate nuclear energy plants. The Kremlin-owned Rosatom has only widened Russias lead over the U.S. in reactor and uranium fuel exports in recent years, while successfully deploying new technologies at home. Chinas state utilities have built reactors at home faster than any other country, and the country now looks poised to begin exporting its reactor designs in direct competition with the U.S.

Putting the TVA at the cutting edge of the U.S. governments nuclear revival strategy is not a new idea . But its gaining momentum. The utility is already working on two next-generation projects to build some of the countrys first small modular reactors. Now even the regulator who oversaw construction of the nations only all-new reactors in Georgia is encouraging the TVA to take up the challenge of constructing more.