White House weighs NRC overhaul

E&E News

14-05-2025

Draft White House executive orders would overhaul nuclear regulation and hand the Department of Energy secretary new powers to approve advanced reactor designs and projects — placing a nuclear safety gatekeeper directly under President Donald Trump.
A review by POLITICO's E&E News of the language in four separate draft orders shows that nuclear advocates in the Trump administration are looking for ways to bypass the independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission and challenge its central claim over nuclear safety standards.
'This is the detailed, agency-specific effort to override the historic independent agency construct,' Stephen Burns, former chair of the NRC during the Obama administration, said in an interview.
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Burns emphasized that many of the reforms outlined in the draft orders are already being implemented under the ADVANCE Act that Congress passed last year. He questioned the necessity and merits of White House micromanagement.
'Everybody should be worried about that, especially because we depend on nuclear power plants for about 20 percent of our electricity across this country,' said Emily Hammond, a former DOE deputy general counsel and current George Washington University law professor. 'That's an important segment of low-carbon electricity, and if it's not safe, that's a huge gap to fill.'
It isn't clear when or if any of the draft orders will land on Trump's desk. But as written now, the drafts return to a theme laid out in many of Trump's energy orders: Radical policy overhauls are needed to power the rapidly growing U.S. tech industry.
Efforts to restart large nuclear plants along with private-sector investment and Department of Energy support for small modular reactor technology are pushing the industry forward after decades of little or no growth. The government and big technology firms say they hope to plug AI data centers into nuclear power plants that can provide around-the-clock generation.
But in asserting more direct control over the NRC, some nuclear boosters fear more harm than good. Trump's February executive order subjects 'significant regulatory actions' to review by the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, or OIRA.
Judi Greenwald, executive director of the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, said adding the OIRA review of either technical nuclear safety issues or minor activities would make NRC less efficient and introduce uncertainty into licensing timelines.
'NRC's reputation as a trusted regulator is important to the public, to industry, and to potential customers of U.S. nuclear technology both here and abroad,' Greenwald said. 'We don't want changing political winds in either direction to undermine NRC's credibility.'
Sources with direct knowledge of how NRC and the White House are handling the February order have told E&E News that OIRA has instructed the agency to submit all draft rules. OIRA will decide on a case-by-case basis if a given regulation is 'significant.' If it is, the White House will conduct a second review that may entail comments or edits. The draft rules will then be returned to the commission.
People familiar with policy discussions say OIRA has already deemed reactor safety rules to be 'significant' enough for a deeper White House review. The proposed 'Part 53' advanced reactor rule and updates to environmental standards are also considered likely to trigger a second review.
The new process also obscures the public record of internal commission deliberations.
'It would potentially run afoul of the Sunshine Act,' said Adam Stein, nuclear energy innovation director at the pro-nuclear think tank Breakthrough Institute. 'The Atomic Energy Act does not say the commission will send regulations to OIRA for approval. It says that the commission will decide.'
The prospect of stripping away much of the NRC's independence has rattled Republicans and Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) said in February that he's willing to give the administration 'the benefit of the doubt' as it tries to bring more political control over independent agencies. 'Everyone should be able to agree that regulatory authorities like the NRC should not be involved in the day-to-day political struggles that occur here in Washington, D.C.,' he said.
Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) characterized any White House effort to exert more control over the NRC as a 'dangerous attempt to serve the interests of Donald Trump and his donors.'
'Undermining the NRC's independence invites safety risks, regulatory dysfunction, and corruption that threaten the future of nuclear energy in America,' she said.
Adding to the instability is growing speculation about leadership changes at the NRC. The term of Trump-appointed Chair David Wright expires in June, and no renomination has been announced.
'At this point, it would be difficult to get him through the process without a lapse,' Stein said.
Here is what we know about the four draft orders:
Draft Order 1: Overhauling NRC
The White House is circulating draft executive orders that could radically alter nuclear policy. They touch on several fronts, from restructuring the NRC to reorienting federal nuclear research and development priorities to setting a goal to quadruple U.S. nuclear power capacity by 2040.
The first draft viewed by E&E News would order NRC, OIRA, the Department of Government Efficiency and 'other agencies' to finalize NRC rules that would establish deadlines for reviewing license applications; reconsider the NRC radiation safety threshold; revise the environmental review process; expedite approvals for reactors that have been tested at DOE and Defense Department sites; and shrink the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, which independently reviews all nuclear licensing actions.
And the agencies, the draft says, would have 18 months to finish this 'wholesale regulatory revision' of the NRC with mandatory 'reductions in force.'
'If you're asking the NRC to speed up this type of licensing, if you're also asking it to reconsider all of its substantive rules, how are you going to do that in a manner that is able to meet these kinds of time frames you're imposing on the agency?' Burns said.
The draft would have the NRC reconsider its standard for radiation exposure, which assumes that there is no safe dose of radiation. That principle has long underpinned much of the NRC's regulatory philosophy. Many physicists, doctors and nuclear players criticize the NRC's current model, arguing that it ignores science and unnecessarily burdens reactor developers.
But scientists lack consensus, and supporters of the stricter requirements contend that they help prevent potentially unknown human health consequences from radiation produced by nuclear processes.
'Documented scientific evidence has only indicated that [low-level radiation exposure] is more dangerous than was known decades ago, when these standards were set,' said Ed Lyman, a physicist and the director of nuclear power safety with the Union of Concerned Scientists. 'Evidence has emerged about the impact of the level of radiation exposure on cardiovascular disease.'
Many of the draft order's other provisions, Burns and Stein point out, are already mandated under the bipartisan ADVANCE Act of 2024 — albeit with more lenient deadlines and greater NRC discretion on the particulars. That includes instructions in the draft that the NRC weigh the societal benefits of nuclear power alongside safety when regulating, and that the agency return decisions on all reactor license applications within 18 months of submittal.
Stein noted, however, that the 18-month deadline in the ADVANCE Act of 2024 applied to relicensing of reactor designs that have been approved once and not to the dozens of first-of-a-kind designs being explored right now. The draft reviewed by E&E News did not distinguish between first-of-a-kind and already-operating reactors in the application of the 18-month deadline.
Draft Order 2: Nuclear R&D
Another draft order would authorize DOE to more directly spearhead pilot and demonstration reactor projects at national laboratories and on other federal lands.
'The Department shall approve at least three reactors pursuant to this pilot program with the goal of completing construction of each of the three reactors by July 4, 2026,' the draft reads.
Experts say that the timeline is nearly impossible at this point.
Draft Order 3: Nuclear for 'national security'
A third draft order seeks to boost American nuclear power by leveraging DOE and the Defense and State departments.
The draft would give the secretaries of Defense and Energy 60 days to 'identify 9 military facilities at which advanced nuclear technologies can be immediately installed and deployed,' prioritizing bases in the Arctic and Indo-Pacific. Then, the military would move toward installation.
Another section would have the secretary of Energy 'site, approve, and authorize the design, construction, and operation of privately-funded advanced nuclear technologies at Department of Energy-owned sites for the purpose of powering AI infrastructure.' It would classify such nuclear power as 'defense critical infrastructure' and allow them to connect to the commercial grid.
This section would attempt to work around NRC-led licensing and safety review processes.
'The Atomic Energy Act requires the NRC to license commercial power plants,' Stein said. 'They're trying to get around that by getting around the question in general: by designating the whole power plant as national security infrastructure.'
Other sections of the draft order would release DOE-held high-assay, low-enriched uranium to private advanced reactor developers and create a new State Department envoy to promote American nuclear exports.
Draft Order 4: Nuclear supply chain
The final draft order primarily focuses on bolstering the nuclear energy supply chain. It would have DOE bolster R&D and deployment of uranium enrichment and nuclear fuel recycling, fund the restart of closed nuclear plants and improve the 'nuclear engineering talent pipeline' with other Cabinet departments.
It is unclear how likely Trump is to sign any of these draft executive orders. 'Each executive order is almost written from a certain agency's perspective,' Stein said. 'They overlap and conflict in some places probably because they weren't written together.'
Greenwald with the Nuclear Innovation Alliance is optimistic about the state of the industry but worried that progress could be stifled if the draft orders are implemented as-is.
'It is important not to distract NRC from the business at hand,' Greenwald said, 'which is to continue its progress to efficiently and deliberately reform its processes to be more risk-informed, performance-based and technology inclusive.'