Trump tightens the control of the independent agency, which monitors nuclear security: NPR

The Trump administration has tightened its control over the independent agency, which is responsible for monitoring the America's core reactors, and is considering an executive regulation that could further undermine its autonomy.

In the future, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will have to send new rules for the security of reactor to the White House, where it is checked and possibly edited. This is a radical departure for the Wachdog agency, which historically was one of the most independent in the government. The new procedures for reviewing the White House have been in the works for months, but have only recently been completed and are now fully in effect.

NPR has also made a draft of an executive regulation “Order of the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission”. The draft stipulates that the size of the NRC's employees reduces and a “wholesale control” of the regulations in coordination with the White House and the Elon Musk team for the government efficiency of the White House and the Elon Musk team to review reactor designs and possibly loose, the current, strict standards for the fight against radiation.

“It is the end of the independence of the agency,” says Allison MacFarlane, director of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia in Canada, which was nominated by President Obama to act as chairman of the NRC from 2012 to 2014. MacFarlane believes that the changes will make the Americans less secure.

“If you are not independent of the influence of political and industry width, you are honestly a risk of accidents,” says MacFarlane.

The design of the Executive Ordinance was in advance of the decision and advisable. It was one of several draft regulations that observed NPR, which apparently aimed to promote the nuclear industry. Other draft regulations called for the construction of small modular nuclear reactors on military bases and for the development of advanced nuclear fuel. Axios reported for the first time about the existence of the executive regulations.

It remains unclear which, if available, is signed by President Trump.

In a statement, the NRC said that the White House “worked as part of our obligation to make NRC regulation processes more efficient. We have no additional details at this point.”

“The President of the United States is the head of the executive,” wrote a spokesman for the office for management and budget of the White House in an e -mail to NPR. “The President has issued an independent agencies that corresponds to the authority given by the constitution of the president. This idea has been spoken for almost 40 years and should not be a surprise.”

Security first

The Congress, with the explicit goal, was founded in 1974 to strictly regulate core reactors and to be exposed to the Americans with radiation. After a partially nuclear collapse on Three Mile Island in 1979, it increased.

The NRC is operated by five commissioners who are appointed five years by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The Commission is a mixture of democratic and republican appointments that formulate politics, develop regulations for nuclear reactors and core materials, issue orders to licensees and decide legal affairs.

The NRC was regarded as a strict regulator. It carries out lengthy scientific reviews of new reactive designs and holds the local inspectors in the house in the operational core reactors in America.

Sometimes the agency is too hidden. In the past, the NRC “took an extremely conservative overview of its responsibility for securing public security,” says Ted Nordhaus, managing director of the Breakthrough Institute, a California Think Tank that works for the development of new nuclear power. Before the Congress in 2023, Nordhaus said to reform the NRC, and last year the Congress adopted a non -partisan law to accelerate the development of new reactor designs. Part of the law indicated several reforms on the NRC.

Go nuclear

The NRC has worked to react to the new law, but it has operated historically largely outside the area of ​​responsibility of the White House. This began to change with an executive regulation signed by the President in February that asked for independent agencies to report directly to the White House's management and budget.

Russell Vought, the head of the Management and Household Office, rejected the idea that every agency in the executive department could operate outside the impact of the president.

“There are no independent agencies,” he said Tucker Carlson in an interview in November last year. “The entire concept of an independent agency should be thrown away.”

The new guideline appears with this view. Before that, the five commissioners of the NRC would be correct and the final rules for nuclear reactors. Your votes would be recorded publicly like the argument for your decision. Now the commissioners will carry out their votes in a closed session and hand over the rule to the office for information and regulatory matters of the White House, which is located in the office for management and household. The White House will have up to 90 days to check the proposed and final rules and make changes before returning to the NRC.

Only after the rule has been completed are the votes of the Commissioners published. It was not immediately clear how the public would know whether the White House had changed a security rule for a nuclear reactor.

Some questioned what the White House could achieve by checking the abstruse rules for nuclear security.

“Who has the technical knowledge to actually carry out a material assessment?” Asks Edwin Lyman, a atomic physicist at the Union of affected scientists, a non -profit organization that has criticized the nuclear industry. “It's just a recipe for confusion and chaos.

The additional review also has the opportunity to work against the goal of the White House to accelerate the reactor permit, adds Nordhaus. The Commission already has difficulty creating new rules, he says. “I'm not sure if that sends [them] The further review of the omb will accelerate the timely and efficient licensing of reactors. “

A radioactive order

The new review is a big change, but it is the design of the executive regulation that promises a radical revision of the agency. After ordering, the NRC would examine the linear NO -threshold standard for radiation security. This standard presupposes that radiation exposure can cause damage, even in levels in which the damage through scientific studies is not easy to see. The agency also urges the agency to check its standard that the exposure of workers “is as low as it is reasonably accessible”.

Nordhaus, which has campaigned for the change in the standards, says that it is not a bad idea to check them. He says the NRC should define minimal radiation exposure levels, which it sees as “safe”. “In terms of public order, you have to set a threshold,” he says.

But MacFarlane says that the current standards are “accepted science”. If they were removed, she says, there would probably be “political pressure to increase the restrictions on exposure”.

The order would also go into the NRC to subject a restructuring to accelerate the licensing of new reactors. Together with this restructuring, the NRC would “carry out a reduction in strength”.

It would also “carry out a comprehensive revision of its regulations” and work with Doge and the Office for Information and Regulatory Affairs.

Both Lyman and Nordhaus say that the shrinking of the NRC would be counterproductive. “If you released half of the staff, you will be released a number of people you need to licens new reactors in a faster way,” says Nordhaus.

Lyman adds that rolling the rule book will not help either. “A monkey key will throw in the works and it will be completely opposed to what is trying to achieve this order.”