Trump’s nuclear power push weakens regulator and poses safety risks, former officials warn

President Donald Trump’s push to approve nuclear plants as quickly as possible threatens to weaken the independent regulator tasked with protecting public health and safety, former federal officials warn. 

Trump issued four sweeping executive orders in May that aim to quadruple nuclear power by 2050 in the U.S. The White House and the technology industry view nuclear as powerful source of reliable electricity that can help meet the growing energy needs of artificial intelligence.

The most consequential of Trump’s orders aims to slash regulations and speed up power plant approvals through an overhaul of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC is an independent agency established by Congress in 1975 to make sure that nuclear reactors are deployed and operated safely.

Trump accuses the NRC of “risk aversion” in his order, blaming the regulator for how few nuclear plants have been built in the U.S. over the past three decades. The president says that the NRC is focused on protecting the public from “the most remote risks,” arguing that such a cautious approach to approving plants restricts access to reliable electricity.

“We’ll be very safe, but we’ll be fast and safe,” Trump said about expediting nuclear plants at a conference on energy and artificial intelligence in Pittsburgh on Tuesday. The president said his administration would get a “whole different group of people” to regulate the industry.

But three former NRC chairs who spoke to CNBC say Trump is blaming the regulator that protects the public, when the industry’s fundamental problem is that new nuclear plants are incredibly expensive to build. The chairs were appointed by Democratic presidents. CNBC also spoke to the chief of staff for a chair appointed by George W. Bush.

Only two new reactors have been built from scratch in the U.S. over the past 30 years. Those new units at Plant Vogtle in Georgia came in $18 billion over budget and seven years behind schedule. Two reactors in South Carolina were canceled in the middle of construction in 2017 due to cost overruns. The mismanagement of the Georgia and South Carolina projects led to the bankruptcy of industry stalwart Westinghouse.

Trump’s intervention at the NRC threatens the independence that the regulator needs to protect the public interest, the former chairs said. If NRC independence is compromised, the regulator could become vulnerable to industry or government influence in ways that raise the risk of a nuclear accident, they warned.

Trump’s executive order is unprecedented in the history of the NRC and it is dangerous, said Allison Macfarlane, who led the NRC as chairperson from 2012 to 2014. The Fukushima nuclear accident is an example of what can happen when safety regulators are not independent, said Macfarlane, who was appointed by President Barack Obama.

The 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan resulted in a severe accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. An investigation by Japan’s parliament concluded that the accident was manmade and found that collusion between government, industry and regulators was the root cause.

Japan’s regulators and government focused on promoting nuclear power as safe and did not force the operator to implement measures that would have made the plant less vulnerable to a natural disaster, according to the 2012 investigation. In the wake of the accident, Japan shut down all of its nuclear plants for safety inspections, losing a power source that supplied 30% of the nation’s electricity.

“There was a massive impact on the economy and that is an issue of national security,” Macfarlane said of the accident in Japan.

“The reason why we have independent regulators, and by independent I mean free of industry and political influence, is to protect the public safety and to protect national security,” she said.

Trump’s executive order seems more focused on approving reactors fast than safety, said Stephen Burns, who chaired the NRC from 2015 to 2017. The order requires the NRC to make final decisions within 18 months on applications to build and operate nuclear plants. It calls for the regulator to make decisions even faster when possible.

“To the extent it’s saying NRC is the problem and we’re more concerned with deadlines than we are with the safety case — that’s where it concerns me,” said Burns, who was also appointed to the commission by Obama.

The NRC is also ordered to undertake a “wholesale revision” of its regulations and work with the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Government Efficiency to accomplish this.

One of the goals of revising NRC regulations is to create a process to approve at a “high volume” microreactors and small modular reactors, advanced nuclear technologies that the industry believes will one day make plants cheaper and faster to build.

But these advanced reactors often have designs that are very different from the existing U.S. fleet and present different safety profiles as a consequence, said Richard Meserve, who chaired the NRC from 1999 to 2003. These new designs have not been deployed in the real world, and some use different reactor coolants such as sodium or molten salt rather than light water in traditional plants.

“We have very strict deadlines on reactors of a type that have not yet been thoroughly reviewed,” said Meserve, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton. “To set deadlines seems to me to be very imprudent. There has to be a careful analysis that is guided by data that may not be available even for some of these reactors.”

And it’s unclear what role OMB and DOGE are playing in revising the NRC’s regulations. The NRC and White House declined to comment when asked whether OMB and DOGE would have the final say over how regulations are changed.

OMB has always reviewed major NRC regulations as a matter of procedure, said Paul Dickman, who served as chief of staff for NRC chair Dale Klein, an appointee of President George W. Bush. (Klein, when asked to comment, referred questions to Dickman. CNBC also reached out to Kristine Svinicki, who was appointed as chair during Trump’s first administration, but didn’t hear back.)

The question now is whether OMB and DOGE will also be passing judgement on the technical content of the regulations, Dickman said. The pair’s undefined role in the review process introduces uncertainty that could make the NRC vulnerable to political interference, he said.

“Are they going to reject something because they didn’t like an opinion?” Dickman asked. “What’s the basis of that? There’s no guidelines for review.”

Trump is “committed to modernizing nuclear regulations, streamlining regulatory barriers, and reforming the Nuclear Regulatory Commission while prioritizing safety and resilience,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said.

The NRC is “working quickly to implement Executive Orders to modernize our regulatory and licensing processes while protecting public health and safety,” spokesperson Scott Burnell said.

Trump has also ordered a staff reduction at the NRC at a time when the regulator is now facing tighter deadlines and a major overhaul of its regulations, the former chairs said. An executive order that calls for staff cuts “is just another way to incentivize people to look for other jobs,” Dickman said.

“It’s a loss of personnel and competency which is really probably the most worrisome part of all this stuff,” Dickman said.

A senior White House official told reporters in May that the size of the staff cuts had not been determined. The executive order does allow for staffing to increase for plant licensing. The NRC and White House declined to comment when asked by CNBC about the potential cuts and whether licensing staff would be beefed up.

Last month, Trump fired NRC Commissioner Christopher Hanson, who was appointed by President Joe Biden. Hanson said in a statement that Trump terminated his position “without cause contrary to existing law and longstanding precedent regarding removal of independent agency appointees.” The White House declined to comment when asked why Hanson was fired.

“This is part of the overthrow of the NRC as an independent agency,” Meserve said.

Political interference, whether real or perceived, threatens undermine U.S. public confidence in nuclear power, Dickman said. Such interference would also tarnish the NRC’s reputation as the international gold standard for approving reactors, which would make it more difficult for U.S. companies to sell nuclear technology abroad, according to Macfarlane, Burns and Meserve.

“Public confidence in the safety of reactors is enhanced by the fact that there is an independent regulator that’s separated from the political process,” Meserve said. “There is a danger when you mix in political considerations and promotion along with the safety mission that the safety mission gets suppressed to some extent — and you could end up with some very bad mistakes being made.”