A group of nuclear critics Monday publicly denounced the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) proposed rulemaking to review Department of Energy and Pentagon-approved reactor designs.
In a joint press release, the 13 organizations, including Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) and Beyond Nuclear, said the proposed rule violates aspects of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and Energy Reorganization Act of 1974. The organizations submitted a joint 17-page comment document under NRC’s April 2 Federal Register notice of the proposed rule.
In a Monday emailed statement to Exchange Monitor, NRC said:
“NRC is America’s nuclear safety regulator. We make our own rules and regulatory findings. NRC will consider all comments that go through the public comment process as the agency continues its rulemaking focusing on reviewing analysis of DOE/DOW [Department of War] demonstration projects.”
NRC’s proposed rule seeks to create an additional licensing pathway for DOE and Pentagon-approved test reactors that are pursuing commercial use. The rule would revise Title 10 Code of Federal Regulations Part 50 and Part 53 to provide a third expedited pathway, building off the previous authorization work from DOE and the Pentagon.
The proposed rule received over 700 comments, according to the notice.
According to the nuclear critics’ May 4 filing, the change violates the Atomic Energy Act by “allowing the NRC to approve license applications under the vague standard of ‘safe’” and allowing it to accept safety findings from other agencies without verifying whether those findings are correct.
“The White House is trying to create a ‘regulatory tunnel’ around NRC’s safety regulations,” Tim Judson, NIRS executive director, said in the release. “That would mean DOE’s biases and obviously false assumptions about the safety of nuclear power plants become the new normal, exposing the public to unacceptable dangers to our health and safety.”
The organizations also said NRC should not “rubber stamp”, meaning to make an approval on something without reviewing it first, military reactors. While the law allows the Pentagon to build its own reactors, it does not allow the NRC to skip safety reviews for civilian nuclear plants just because they use the same reactor designs, Judson said.
The organizations said that DOE has complied with the law through its other demonstration reactor program, with projects such as Kairos Power Hermes 1 and 2 and TerraPower’s Natrium Unit in Kemmerer being subject to NRC license approval. However, in DOE’s reactor pilot program, they said that DOE overstepped its legal limitations in its licensing authorities.
“In the commenters’ view, EO [Executive Order] 14300 and EO 14301 have imposed DOE and the White House’s explicit promotional agenda on the NRC, in an attempt to supersede governing statutes that assign NRC the sole authority to regulate and license commercial reactors and other production and utilization facilities and to ensure the Trump administration’s favored approach is conveyed to and understood by the NRC,” according to the document.
During a Wednesday Senate Environment and Public Works Committee fiscal 2027 budget hearing, NRC Chair Ho Nieh told the lawmakers that NRC will not rubber stamp DOE or Pentagon authorized reactor designs. He also added that applicants must be required to send a full application that shows how the information from DOE or Pentagon authorization meets NRC requirements.
“I want to say upfront that the information through DOE or DOW authorization is not a shortcut through NRC licensing,” Nieh told Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.). There will be no rubber stamping that is going to happen at the agency. With this rule that we have published in draft form…what that guidance will do it will help the NRC identify the scope and depth of how it uses information from another federal agency to make an NRC safety decision.”