Knox News: Ex-TVA boss, fired by Trump joins Oak Ridge nuke power cult firm's board, joins predecessors thru revolving door

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Former TVA CEO takes new leadership role with Oak Ridge nuclear firm

Mariah Franklin

Knoxville News Sentinel

July 8, 2026, 5:07 a.m. ET

Don Moul, embattled former chief of the nation’s largest public power provider, has landed a new leadership role with an Oak Ridge nuclear fuel company.

Moul led the seven-state Tennessee Valley Authority, a nuclear utility, as its president and CEO from April 2025 through April 2026. As of July 6, he has a seat on the board of directors for Standard Nuclear, an Oak Ridge-based company aiming to produce a fuel that could power next-gen reactors, including some being built in East Tennessee.

TVA’s current reactors don't run on Standard Nuclear-produced fuel, and the GE Hitachi BWRX-300 design it's picked for new advanced reactors planned in Oak Ridge wouldn't run on the type of fuel Standard Nuclear produces.

 

Federal documents Standard Nuclear filed in July show the company's board is made up of five directors, including Moul. The company as of July was starting the process of going public, one of many nuclear firms getting established in East Tennessee as federal leaders aim to quadruple American nuclear capacity in the coming years.

New start for ex-CEO follows short, tumultuous term as TVA chief

Moul’s position on the Standard Nuclear board is the first public hint of what’s next for him after a run as CEO marred by personal criticism from the president of the United States and historic gridlock at the utility as its own board went without a quorum needed to vote on basic business for most of 2025.

Moul had the shortest run as utility chief of any TVA CEO in the organization’s modern history but decades of other experience in the nuclear business. His tenure with TVA stretched back to 2021, when he was hired to replace Mike Skaggs as TVA’s chief operations officer. Skaggs in 2026 replaced Moul as interim CEO.

Before joining TVA, Moul worked for companies including NextEra Energy and First Energy Corporation, filling chief nuclear officer roles and other management positions. He got his college degree in nuclear engineering from Penn State and an MBA from the University of Notre Dame.

 

Moul was a target of President Donald Trump, who decried the pay for the TVA CEO as unreasonable and vowed publicly to make (Moul’s) “life miserable.” Moul was paid millions less in the role than his predecessor, Jeff Lyash, but both men were the best paid federal employee while serving as TVA CEO.

Unlike Lyash - whom Trump also criticized during his first term as president - Moul led TVA as it went without a functioning board for the longest period in its modern history. Board upheaval came after Trump fired several directors in 2025, and it dissipated only after the U.S. Senate approved four men picked by the president to take up seats leading TVA.

Moul announced he would retire weeks after Trump sent TVA a directive that would have capped pay at the utility at $500,000. It would have slashed Moul’s pay by about 90%. Skaggs, Moul’s successor, accepted the job for pay of up to $999,000 per year.

 

What have other TVA CEOs done after leaving the utility?

Moul isn’t alone in staying in the power business, at least part time, after exiting the CEO role. Other former TVA chiefs have taken up new positions with other major utilities and board memberships for massive energy companies.

Lyash, who announced his retirement from TVA in 2025, has joined several boards as a director in 2026. His public LinkedIn profile lists current board service for Curtiss-Wright Corporation, Dominion Energy Group and AECON Group Inc., as well as advisor roles with FluxPoint Energy, Thorium Atomics and the Japanese Nuclear Safety Institute.

 

Bill Johnson, Lyash’s predecessor, left TVA for a stint at Pacific Gas & Electric Company, from which he retired in 2020. He joined the California utility after the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 85 people and ignited after a hook on one of PG&E’s transmission lines snapped.

Tom Kilgore, the first CEO of TVA after the role was restructured along with the board in 2005, served on the Nuclear Energy Institute’s executive committee after leaving the utility in 2012.

 

Mariah Franklin reports on technology and energy for Knox News. Email: mariah....@knoxnews.com. Signal: mariahfranklin.01