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On May 23, President Trump signed four executive orders aimed at significantly expanding and accelerating the development and construction of nuclear power plants, focusing on advanced reactors.
The established rationale for government action is the combination of domestic energy emergencies and the desire to win geopolitical competition with China and Russia. However, if implemented in writing, these orders may undermine the goals they intend to promote.
The new order asserts that the U.S. failure to develop the nuclear energy sector in recent decades is mainly attributed to the use of myopia and misleading 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 set out a series of radical steps to enable non-commercial reactors to be built on their federal sites by the energy or defense licensing sector, thereby shrinking, repositioning and even bypassing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In general, they aim to achieve rapid development of new nuclear designs and accelerate the construction of advanced nuclear power plants.
It also ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to conduct “wholesale amendments to its regulations and guidance” within nine months.
Welcome the desire to revamp the U.S. nuclear industry foundation, encourage and support the construction of new nuclear power plants, and simplify the licensing of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
But this is neither new to the Trump administration nor specialized. Under the Pre-Bill passed by Congress in 2024, the committee has begun adapting to its new reactor design and licensing procedures for the work.
Three flawed places guide new execution orders. First, they believe that the future of nuclear energy is fundamentally similar to that of other energy sources, where design and rapid deployment innovations are seen as inherently net positives and errors can be resolved later.
These orders downplay or ignore the particular magnitude of nuclear risk, a series of trauma accidents suffered by leading nuclear power countries, and a unique environment and multigenerational footprint of nuclear waste and used fuels.
Second, nuclear regulation is mostly seen as being too heavy, expensive, time-consuming and completely hindering efficiency.
In this regard, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission explicitly accuses the United States of “restricting nuclear power development”, and the order fails to recognize the core purpose of regulation: to build and maintain trust in nuclear energy.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not yet proposed a key obstacle to U.S. nuclear development, a key tool to earn and trust nuclear energy at home and abroad.
Third, the executive order seriously exaggerates the delays in delays, which are a new deployment legally attributed to excessive nuclear regulation. They underestimated the increase in the market due to restrictions on labor availability, supply chain, financing, specialty fuels and community buying.
What Americans need is that any nuclear power plant built and operated in the United States is safe, safe, and ultimately beneficial to the prosperity of the United States and the hospitality community.
But the end result of these executive orders, coupled with the additional impact of other executive actions on other actions that reform government regulatory processes to align with White House policies, is risking trust in public nuclear energy.
Reduce the staff of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, reduce its political independence, damage its technological integrity, expand its community participation role, or avoid directly avoiding the Commission’s inducing more uncertainty than ignite confidence in the Nuclear Renaissance.
Reduced for years, it will undermine the Commission’s national and global credibility to reduce its risk standards for reliable use to minimize the adverse radiation impact of nuclear power plants.
Furthermore, these commands are bound to speed up the brain loss of the institution, whose credibility, speed and efficiency depend on the quality workforce that firmly believes in its mission and inspires all other workforces with its professionalism.
They will reduce confidence in further extending the life of aging nuclear power plants (many of which have been in operation for 60 years or more) or restart Mostel’s plants.
Moreover, they may unnecessarily increase public vigilance that new nuclear designs will not be subject to strict transparency scrutiny until their performance is fully demonstrated and tested.
The public’s response to the nuclear accidents in Chernobyl and Fukushima highlights the key trust in public support for nuclear power.
Here, the global setback to the Federal Aviation Agency’s credibility as a NASA licensing agency is an incredible reminder that when it emerged after the fatal collapse of the Boeing 737 MAX, the agency has delegated some of its licensing procedures to the company.
The credibility of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as a professional and independent regulator is also the main selling point for US nuclear suppliers seeking to win overseas contracts.
The commission is the reputation of the gold standard for nuclear regulation being the minority of the U.S. comparison of the U.S. nuclear industry is trying to achieve economies of scale to enhance its competitiveness to Russian and Chinese companies (who can provide better financing and other allowances).
Yes, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should operate more effectively. Making them so hard is already in progress, which can be further encouraged.
But now, just as nuclear power is approaching a new dawn, it is the worst time for the Damage Commission to reliably assess and faithfully evaluate, independently and publicly report its considerations and decisions on its assessment and licensing.
Toby Dalton is a senior fellow and co-director of the Carnegie International Peace Endowment Foundation’s nuclear policy program. Ariel (Eli) Levite is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment Foundation.