Trump’s executive orders could endanger America’s nuclear renaissance

Downscaling the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s staff, curtailing its political independence, compromising its technical integrity, scaling back its community engagement role or avoiding the commission outright introduces more uncertainty than inspires confidence in a nuclear renaissance.

The Hill, by Toby Dalton and Ariel E. Levite, 05/28/25

On May 23, President Trump signed four executive orders designed to dramatically expand and accelerate U.S. development and construction of nuclear power plants, with emphasis on advanced reactors.

The stated rationale for the administration’s action is a combination of a domestic energy emergency and a desire to win the geopolitical competition against China and Russia. However, if implemented as written, these orders could undermine the very objective they intend to promote.

The new orders assert that the failure of the U.S. to develop the nuclear energy sector in recent decades is primarily attributable to a myopic and misguided approach to nuclear regulation by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Under the Atomic Energy Act, the commission licenses the design, construction and operation of domestic nuclear and radiological facilities, including commercial nuclear power plants.

The orders lay out a series of radical steps to scale back, reorient and even bypass the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by having the Departments of Energy or Defense license non-commercial reactors to be built on their federal sites. In total, they aim to achieve rapid development of new nuclear designs and expedited construction of advanced nuclear power plants.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is also ordered to effect a “wholesale revision of its regulations and guidance” within nine months. ………………………

Three flawed premises guide the new executive orders. First, they see the future of nuclear energy as fundamentally similar to that of other energy sources — whereby innovation in design and fast deployment are seen as inherent net positives, and bugs, if any, can be fixed later.

The orders downplay or ignore the special magnitude of nuclear risks, the series of traumatic accidents suffered by leading nuclear power nations and the unique environmental and multi-generational footprint of nuclear waste and spent fuel.

Second, nuclear regulation is mostly viewed as unduly burdensome, expensive, time-consuming and an outright drag on efficiency.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is explicitly blamed for “throttling nuclear power development” in the U.S. In this regard, the orders fail to recognize a central purpose of regulation: to build and maintain trust in nuclear energy.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not presented the key obstacle to nuclear development in the U.S. And it is the key instrument to earn and keep trust in nuclear energy both nationally and internationally.

Third, the executive orders grossly exaggerate the delays to new deployment legitimately attributable to excessive nuclear regulation. They underestimate the addition of time to market due to limitations on workforce availability, supply chain, financing, specialty fuels and community buy-in……………………………..

the net result of these executive orders, coupled with the additional impact of other administration actions to reform governmental regulatory processes to align with White House policies, is to risk public trust in nuclear energy.

It would shatter the commission’s credibility, nationwide and worldwide, to lower the risk standards it has been credibly using for years to minimize adverse radiation effects from nuclear power plants……………………………………………………………………..