Too harsh a taskmaster? Public safety overkill? Stifling an industry vital to America’s economic future?

Yes, yes and yes, if you ask the Trump administration, which is overhauling the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (which oversees the teardown of San Onofre) and paring back rules for experimental reactors at the Department of Energy (which is responsible for eventually removing the highly radioactive nuclear waste stranded at San Onofre).

National Public Radio recently reported that the DOE secretly drafted new rules slashing environmental and security requirements for next-generation experimental nuclear reactors. (And, in Sacramento, lawmakers have proposed a bill that would exempt advanced nuclear reactors from California’s prohibition on new reactor construction.)

Meanwhile, Trump’s Executive Order 14300 blames onerous NRC regulations (rather than the plethora of other variables at work, such as market forces, cheap natural gas and strong public distaste) for the dearth of new commercial nuclear plants in America. A “wholesale revision” — some might say “neutering” — is under way at the NRC that could empower nuclear power to ramp up nationwide.

On March 4, the NRC crowed proudly about issuing the first commercial reactor construction permit in a decade — and the first approval for a non-light water reactor in more than 40 years. A TerraPower subsidiary plans to build a sodium-cooled, advanced reactor design near an existing coal-fired power plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming.

Industry applauds the moves as long overdue. Officials at the NRC and DOE say the redux will make things better.

But some scientists, economists and lawmakers are sounding alarms.

NuScale VOYGR SMR power plant (SOURCE: U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission)

‘Deeply troubling’

“This deeply troubling development confirms my worst fears about the dire state of nuclear power safety and security oversight under the Trump administration,” said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, in a statement.

“… The Energy Department has not only taken a sledgehammer to the basic principles that underlie effective nuclear regulation, but it has also done so in the shadows, keeping the public in the dark. These longstanding principles were developed over the course of many decades and consider lessons learned from painful events such as the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters. This is a massive experiment in the deregulation of novel, untested nuclear facilities that could pose grave threats to public health and safety.

Ed Lyman (Union of Concerned Scientists)

“These drastic changes may extend beyond the Reactor Pilot Program,” Lyman added, referring to moves Trump made last year to circumvent the more rigorous licensing rules employed by the NRC.

“While the DOE created a legally dubious framework to designate these reactors as ‘test’ reactors to bypass the NRC’s statutory authority, these dramatic alterations may further weaken standards used in the broader DOE authorization process and propagate across the entire fleet of commercial nuclear facilities, severely degrading nuclear safety throughout the United States.”

If the pilot program reactors want to go mainstream, and produce commercial power for our utilities, they’ll still have to get licenses from the NRC. But Lyman noted that the NRC has agreed to greatly restrict the scope of additional safety and security reviews for projects that have DOE authorizations.

“The push to rapidly license new nuclear plants is part of the Trump administration’s plan to provide massive amounts of power for the data centers that tech giants such as Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft are pursuing to support artificial intelligence,” Lyman said.

Jeff Bezos, from second left, Donald Trump Jr., Sundar Pichai, Elon Musk, Usha Vance, Doug Burgum and Vice President JD Vance applaud during the 60th Presidential Inauguration in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. (Kenny Holston/The New York Times via AP, Pool)

It’s the image of those titans of industry at Trump’s inauguration that U.S. Rep. Mike Levin, D-San Juan Capistrano, sees keenly in his mind’s eye.

“You had the heads of Amazon, Google, Meta, and then they all went and donated huge amounts of money,” he said. “These are the companies that are backing these new reactors. They have a direct interest in seeing regulations disappear.”

The build-out required to meet the energy demands of their AI projects should be paid for by the companies, not the ratepayers, Levin added.

David Victor, professor at UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy, and former chair of the San Onofre Community Engagement Panel, doesn’t think the DOE/NRC changes are “alarming” just yet, but they are a cause for concern.

“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission had already streamlined the approval process for new reactor designs, and made it quite easy for new reactors to get licenses while demonstrating their safety characteristics,” Victor said. “So removing more regulations, in some ways, is a solution looking for a problem that didn’t really exist.

“There are many reasons to believe that the new reactors are intrinsically much safer and should need less regulation,” Victor added. “But the issue of keeping public confidence in the nuclear industry overall remains of paramount importance, and regulation is one major part of that.”

Critics have long accused regulators of being too chummy with the industries they regulate. In their eyes, the administration’s recent spate of changes could make things much worse. Expect some fireworks at the first public meeting on Trump’s executive order remaking the NRC from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Thursday, March 12. Details of how to attend online are at https://bit.ly/4scDDYw.

‘Irrational results’

Trump’s executive order lays the blame for the stagnation of nuclear power at the NRC’s feet.

TOPSHOT – US President Donald Trump gestures as he boards Air Force One before departing Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, on March 1, 2026, on his way back to Washington, DC. The United States and Israel launched massive bombardments against Iran and killed its supreme leader on February 28, with attacks ongoing Sunday. The US military on Sunday said three service members have been killed and five seriously wounded in the war against Iran — the first casualties announced on the US side. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP via Getty Images)

“Instead of efficiently promoting safe, abundant nuclear energy, the NRC has instead tried to insulate Americans from the most remote risks without appropriate regard for the severe domestic and geopolitical costs of such risk aversion,” the order said.

“The NRC utilizes safety models that posit there is no safe threshold of radiation exposure and that harm is directly proportional to the amount of exposure. Those models lack sound scientific basis and produce irrational results, such as requiring that nuclear plants protect against radiation below naturally occurring levels. A myopic policy of minimizing even trivial risks ignores the reality that substitute forms of energy production also carry risk, such as pollution with potentially deleterious health effects….

“(M)y Administration will reform the NRC, including its structure, personnel, regulations and basic operations. In so doing, we will produce lasting American dominance in the global nuclear energy market, create tens of thousands of high-paying jobs and generate American-led prosperity and resilience.”

The industry is pleased.

“It is encouraging to see DOE and the NRC working closely together to ensure a coordinated approach that supports innovation during testing while maintaining safety oversight for commercial deployment,” said Andrew Mauer, senior director of regulatory affairs at the Nuclear Energy Institute.

“Given the need to modernize outdated DOE and NRC processes and requirements, there is clearly significant opportunity to enhance efficiency without impacting public health and safety.”

Yes, the NRC is the only agency that can license commercial nuclear plants. But the DOE has long had the authority to authorize and oversee, test and research reactors, he said. Trump’s Executive Order 14301 declared that advanced reactors not yet deployed — i.e., that do not produce commercial electric power — are for research and, as a result, are in the DOE’s domain.

Trump’s order was issued in May. The DOE’s Reactor Pilot Program was born in June.

It “establishes a new DOE pathway for advanced reactor demonstration to fast-track commercial licensing. The program aims to leverage DOE’s authority to expedite the research and development of advanced nuclear reactor technologies with the larger goal of reaching criticality for at least three advanced nuclear reactor concepts located outside of the national laboratories by July 4, 2026.”

The decommissioned San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in San Diego County, CA, on Tuesday, February 24, 2026. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Like, four months from now.

“DOE authorization enables learning and innovation during the testing phase, while NRC oversight governs commercial deployment and long-term operation, with coordination between the agencies to ensure continuity,” Mauer said.

Which is to say, any DOE-authorized reactor that moves beyond testing into commercial power production for our homes and businesses must still be approved by the NRC. But like many federal agencies in the wake of DOGE, the NRC is down hundreds of workers, many of whom held jobs that are highly specialized and technical.

The NRC had 2,885 workers the day before Trump’s inauguration, according to documents provided to the U.S. Senate. There have been about 500 departures and 50 new hires since then, spokesman Scott Burnell said. That means the NRC workforce is down nearly 16%.

“The NRC continues to meet its mission of safely enabling the use of civilian nuclear technologies, and implementing Executive Order 14300 and the ADVANCE Act to accelerate the safe deployment of advanced civilian nuclear reactor technology, maintaining American energy dominance and national security,” Burnell said.

All this doesn’t necessarily give the Union of Concerned Scientists a great deal of confidence. The group says the DOE has rewritten the entire body of safety and security directives used to authorize experimental nuclear reactor construction, slashing hundreds of pages of detailed requirements and replacing them with “vague and difficult-to-enforce standards,” leaving “significant discretion” to the private companies building these reactors.

NRC staff is recommending changes to its Reactor Oversight Process inspection program that could shrink the hours spent on direct inspections by 38% a year.

Meanwhile, the nation still has no idea where to put the millions of pounds of commercial nuclear waste that have piled up over the past 50 years. The NRC has pulled the plug on three proposed rules for securing spent fuel.

If this administration has its way, more waste — perhaps much, much more — is on the way.