Trump just assaulted the independence of the nuclear regulator. What could go wrong?

By Allison Macfarlane | February 21, 2025

President Trump, through his recent Executive Order, has attacked independent regulatory agencies in the US government. This order gives the Office of Management and Budget power over the regulatory process of until-now independent agencies. These regulatory agencies include the Federal Elections Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission—and my former agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which I chaired between July 2012 and December 2014.

An independent regulator is free from industry and political influence. Trump’s executive order flies in the face of this basic principle by requiring the Office of Management and Budget to “review” these independent regulatory agencies’ obligations “for consistency with the President’s policies and priorities.” This essentially means subordinating regulators to the president.

In the past, the president and Congress, which has oversight capacity on the regulators, stayed at arm’s length from the regulators’ decisions. This was meant to keep them isolated, ensuring their necessary independence from any outside interference. Trump’s executive order implies there are no longer independent regulators in the United States.

Independent regulators should not only be free from government and industry meddling; they also need to be adequately staffed with competent experts and have the budget to operate efficiently. They also need to be able to shut down facilities such as nuclear power plants that are not operating safely, according to regulations. To do this, they need government to support their independent decisions and rulemaking.

Independence matters. When I was chairman, I traveled the world talking about the importance of an independent regulator to countries where nuclear regulators exhibited a lack of independence and were subject to excessive industry and political influence. It is ironic that the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission—often called the “Gold Standard” in nuclear regulation—has now been captured by the Trump administration and lost its independence. So much for the Gold Standard; the Canadian, the French, or the Finnish nuclear regulator will have to take on that mantle now.

To understand what is at stake, one needs to look no further than the Fukushima accident in March 2011, which showed the world how a country’s economic security is vulnerable to a captured regulator………………………………………………………..

An independent investigation by the Diet (Japan’s house of parliament) into the cause of the Fukushima accident concluded unequivocally that: “The TEPCO Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident was the result of collusion between the government, the regulators and TEPCO, and the lack of governance by said parties. They effectively betrayed the nation’s right to be safe from nuclear accidents.” Japan’s government and nuclear industry continue to struggle with the clean-up of the Fukushima site, and it purposely began in 2023 to release still-contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean. Nearby countries responded by banning fishing products from the region.

As the industry often says, a nuclear accident anywhere is a nuclear accident everywhere. …………………… more https://thebulletin.org/2025/02/trump-just-assaulted-the-independence-of-the-nuclear-regulator-what-could-go-wrong/?fbclid=IwY2xjawImRopleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHXcsEIvbsR7x3_k1wSvr8EHSizxiqUnLBb42mZ2YJGeOYLxrftrY4-5HVg_aem_Q1k1WJJnpyqw6WEHOuvZ2Q