By Linda Pentz Gunter
Assistant Editor Note: Due to unforeseen computer issues, the PeaceWorker article due out on May 28, 2026 could not be published.
The Trump administration is once again doing what it does best – demonstrating a complete disregard for the law, and we’re not even talking end runs around the IRS here, or slush funds with which to reward family members and violent insurrectionists.
This time, it’s about nuclear power and the latest rush by the White House to build new reactors in the US, whilst shortcutting its way around expensive annoyances such as safety regulations.
This eagerness to expand nuclear energy comes despite the fact that the new “advanced” or “small” reactor designs are too slow to get here for climate mitigation purposes, too expensive to make any sense when renewable energy can be deployed faster and more cheaply, and haven’t passed even the most rudimentary of safety evaluations. Almost every design proffered — and there are dozens of them — remain largely sketches on paper with unsolved technical challenges.
And yet, the country’s longstanding regulator, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), despite being stripped of a large part of its authority by the metaphorically axe-wielding Department OF Government Efficiency (DOGE), the murky entity created by the now departed Elon Musk and which may, or may not, still exist, is seemingly bending to every White House whim.
As a result, a so-called “Rubber-Stamp Rule” issued by the NRC is gaining momentum, even though it clearly violates key components of the Atomic Energy Act (AEA) and Energy Reorganization Act, according to comments filed recently by 13 organizations from across the US.
The proposed regulation, entitled “NRC Reviews of Reactor Designs Previously Authorized by U.S. Department of Energy or Department of War”, proposes to revise existing NRC regulations to facilitate direct leveraging that will allow reactor designs that the Department of Energy (DOE) and Department of Defense (DOD) have approved to bypass required safety reviews by the NRC.
The DOE has also announced that “pilot reactors” would be excluded from both NRC licensing and environmental reviews and that it would exempt previously untested reactors that it approves to be built and operated from any review of their environmental impacts.
The AEA gives the NRC sole authority and responsibility for the licensing of commercial reactors. The Proposed Rule would violate the AEA by allowing the NRC to accept safety findings from other agencies without verifying whether they are correct, compliant with the adequate protection standard, or adequately supported.
Accordingly, the Proposed Rule would create a kind of regulatory tunnel around NRC’s established regulations and statutorily required oversight and licensing processes. This would allow for DOE’s promotional biases and incorrect conclusions about reactor safety and environmental impacts to become the new normal in the regulation of the civilian nuclear power industry, exposing the public to unacceptable dangers to our health and safety.
Eleven state attorneys general, in their own March 11 comment filing, had earlier agreed with civil society groups that such exclusions violate existing law. The AGs concurred that the NRC, not the DOE, has licensing authority over the commercial reactor demonstration projects that the DOE undertakes.
The NRC’s proposed regulation would allow companies that want to build a nuclear reactor of the same design as one DOE has previously approved to merely submit documentation of that approval and claim that the previously built reactor is “safe.” Yet, the NRC rulemaking notice contains no explanation of what “safe” actually means.
New reactor companies would therefore likely never have to go through a detailed safety review by the NRC to build and operate such reactors. In 1974, Congress amended the Atomic Energy Act to prohibit such a scheme when it abolished the promotion-oriented Atomic Energy Commission, after it had lost the confidence of Congress and the public over safety. The NRC was instead established to provide a regulator that prioritizes safety and would not be obligated to take shortcuts in favor of an expedited production agenda over public safety.
But half a century later, we are on the same dangerous collision course, casting aside the NRC in favor of the DOE, which does not have the experience or the staff to get the industry in line with safety and security. This capitulation to the Trump agenda could lead to another loss of confidence in the regulator, even leading to the NRC being abolished altogether.
The 13 groups affirmed in their comments to the NRC that the agency cannot skip safety reviews and simply “rubber-stamp” reactors that the military builds because the DOD is using the same designs as new civil reactors. That’s because the military routinely exposes its personnel to dangers that civilians are supposed to be protected from.
The NRC has at times performed poorly as a diligent safety regulator, routinely serving more as lapdog than watchdog and putting industry profit motives ahead of public protection. But even a weak regulator is better than none at all. Nuclear power is simply too inherently dangerous a technology to operate outside the law. Ignoring those dangers will put millions of Americans at risk of another catastrophic nuclear accident.
Linda Pentz Gunter is the Executive Director of Beyond Nuclear. She is the author of the book, No To Nuclear. Why Nuclear Power Destroys Lives, Derails Climate Progress And Provokes War, published by Pluto Press.
This article was posted on May 29, 2026 at NuclearCosts.org.