Over the past two weeks, President Donald Trump has issued a series of executive orders. These orders represent a dramatic shift to undercut the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the federal agency which has regulated the nation’s fleet of commercial scale nuclear reactors for more than 50 years. The executive actions are intended to be the first step in a wide-ranging overhaul of the NRC. Their mission is to accelerate the deployment of advanced, commercial taking into account new power reactors across the United States.
The NRC currently oversees the licensing and regulation of nuclear facilities, and it is in the process of reviewing whether to restart operations at two mothballed plants: Palisades in Michigan and Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. The new regulations mandate that the NRC must adjudicate nuclear reactor license decisions in less than 18 months. This is a major cut in time from past review processes.
Trump’s orders do not seek the removal or replacement of any of the presently seated five commissioners heading the NRC. Some analysts believe this is a sign that Biden is looking for procedural changes rather than a transformational change in leadership. The president’s orders assist his strategy to increase the production of nuclear energy. At the heart of this plan is developing a new regulatory framework that would enable the Departments of Energy and Defense to construct nuclear reactors on unencumbered federal land.
… by issuing executive orders that cut back on the time and bureaucracy required to get licenses. They aim to ramp up domestic uranium mining and expand the United States’ uranium enrichment capacity. Nuclear energy Investment in nuclear energy is reemerging. This change comes on the heels of years of financial turmoil across the industry. Companies such as Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon are now investing in small, advanced nuclear reactors, signaling a renewed interest in this energy sector.
The lack of reform is a crisis and the need for reform is deeply urgent. That’s because building new nuclear plants in the U.S. is extremely slow and expensive. The two new reactors at Plant Vogtle, just east of Augusta, Georgia, experienced prolonged delays. On average, they ended up taking seven years longer to build and went over budget by $18 billion. The NRC projects that Three Mile Island, which experienced a partial meltdown in 1979, may be able to return to service by 2028. That’s a huge reversal of fortune for the facility.
The reforms intend to speed up the testing of new reactors at the Department of Energy’s national laboratories. Industry experts believe that these measures may help revitalize the nuclear power sector, which has faced significant challenges in recent years.
“There will be turnover and changes in roles” – White House official