The Trump administration has secretly rewritten nuclear safety rules

[mysteryowl]

Source: NPR

The Trump administration has overhauled a set of nuclear safety directives and shared them with the companies it is charged with regulating, without making the new rules available to the public, according to documents obtained exclusively by NPR.

The sweeping changes were made to accelerate development of a new generation of nuclear reactor designs. They occurred over the fall and winter at the Department of Energy, which is currently overseeing a program to build at least three new experimental commercial nuclear reactors by July 4 of this year.

The changes are to departmental orders, which dictate requirements for almost every aspect of the reactors' operations - including safety systems, environmental protections, site security and accident investigations.

NPR obtained copies of over a dozen of the new orders, none of which are publicly available. The orders slash hundreds of pages of requirements for security at the reactors. They also loosen protections for ground water and the environment and eliminate at least one key safety role. The new orders cut back on requirements for keeping records, and they raise the amount of radiation a worker can be exposed to before an official accident investigation is triggered.

Read more: https://www.npr.org/2026/01/28/nx-s1-5677187/nuclear-safety-rules-rewritten-trump

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Sorry to bring more bad news (to DU), but NPR is reporting this as a very big deal.
It is exclusive reporting.

They can now leak contaminates into waterways!
NPR posts pages of the report at the link.
New reactors will have these "new" rules.
Idaho, Utah, Kansas, Texas, Tenn.

[UpInArms]

1. This maladminstration is worse than Wrongway Feldon

Evil stupid malignant

[kerouac2]

2. Well that's a disturbing headline

What can possibly go wrong

[angrychair]

3. No way will that hold in court

You can't change rules in secret and any company that uses the incompetence of this administration to cut corners on safety and process should be vilified and banned for the nuclear industry for all time.
What the hell are they thinking?!? This is NOT an "oh, my bad. Made a silly mistake. Here is my money for the fine" this is a "oh shit, I'm sorry, now half of Kansas is uninhabitable for the next 10,000 years" kind of mistake. You can't unring that bell.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

5. More from the article:

The DOE was uniquely positioned to offer a speedy pathway to approval. The nation's commercial nuclear reactors are typically under the regulatory oversight of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Hanson says the NRC is independent and known for its rigor and public process. ... But since the NRC began its work in 1975, the Energy Department has retained the ability to regulate its own reactors, which have historically been used for research and nuclear weapons-related activities.

The rules governing DOE reactors are a mix of federal regulations and directives known as "orders." Changes to federal regulations require public notice and comment, but DOE's orders can be legally changed internally with no public comment period. The orders have historically been made public via a DOE database.

Until now, the DOE's rules have typically applied to just a handful of reactors located on government property. The Reactor Pilot Program expands that regulatory authority to all reactors built as part of the program. Officials explained to the crowd in the June meeting that this includes DOE-contracted reactors built outside of the department's national laboratories.

And while broadening its oversight, officials said, safety personnel located primarily at Idaho National Laboratory would also rewrite the DOE's orders for these reactors.

[yellow dahlia]

15. Seems obvious, right?

[highplainsdem]

4. I posted about this in GD to highlight that this was done as a favor for the AI bros:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220976814

Which NPR mentions, but not till the 6th paragraph, when it should have been in the first paragraph.

This is all about the AI companies' mad rush to build and power new data centers.

[GiqueCee]

6. A nation is not just real estate...

... it is THE PEOPLE! And Trump, the oligarchs that own him, and the brain-dead sycophants that still support him, will be responsible for the deaths of thousands, if not millions, of Americans through their unbridled greed, and mindless obeisance to an unspeakably evil man-child psychotically obsessed with punishing any and all who didn't vote for him. For God's sake, he mentions states that he supposedly carried when addressing and audience of elementary school children! He can't help himself! That's how petty and mindlessly selfish he is. All of his minions and minders KNOW what a monster he is; they just don't care. They only have eyes for what they can get out of their association with him.
Undermining the safety of ANY industry, but ESPECIALLY the nuclear industry, is madness beyond imagining, and he revels in his fever dreams of how many innocent people will die because of him. He WANTS people to die! He gets off on it!
And, by the way, so does Putin. Don't EVER dismiss ol' Vlad and his evil influence.

[yellow dahlia]

16. He gets off on gore and death.

He also gets off on being the source of gore and death.

[sakabatou]

7. Dump: Who cares about nuclear safety anyway?

[NNadir]

8. It would be interesting if people were as concerned with fossil fuel exposures...

...as they are with nuclear related exposures.

In the next hour about 800 people will die on this planet from air pollution.

I would be interested to learn, in the 69th year of commercial nuclear power operations in the United States, with reference to the primary scientific literature of a death toll from nuclear opeartions in this country that comes close to that rate.

I issue this challenge often here and I have yet to receive a satisfactory reply. In fact nuclear operations have a spectacular record of low environmental and health impact.

While I certainly support radiation safety, a subject on which my son's girlfriend is working for her Ph.D, I strongly object to selective attention.

There is overkill in reaction to the words "nuclear" and "radioactive." The absurdity of this attitude is to consider the coal, oil, and gas burned, killing people as these combustion facilities operated normally, to power computers to carry on about tritium releases at Fukushima.

Nuclear energy saves lives. This is a fact, because fossil fuel energy kills in vast numbers, on a scale of millions of people per year. Every nuclear plant operating on this planet displaces coal and gas, the emissions of which are destroying the planet at an accelerating rate.

Nuclear energy need not be risk free to be safer than everything else. It only needs to be safer than everything else.

If the orange pedophile's administration declares that orange juice is orange, that doesn't make it blue.

[Bayard]

9. That's comforting

Score one for the planet, and next generation.

[hunter]

10. It will be fossil fuels that destroy the natural world as we know it and kill billions of people.

The most dangerous energy resource is natural gas, largely because people think it is "clean" ( or at least "better than coal" ) and because it is essential for the economic viability of their solar and wind powered follies.

As a society we've been very well trained to overlook the death and destruction caused by fossil fuels.

[DougBee]

11. What about the nuclear plant construction costs and the waste fuel.

The. Cost of energy production from nuclear reactors will be much higher and where are the spent fuel going for 10,000 + years, that has been produced since 1960. Oh Thats right, There is no plan.

A Quick search on line
Solar PV Key Cost and Development Comparisons Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE):

Utility-scale solar PV is estimated at ($24 )/MWh, while nuclear remains one of the most expensive, often exceeding ($100)/MWh.

Capital Cost: Solar installation costs have plummeted by 90% since 2009, with utility-scale projects costing less than ($1,000) per kW. In contrast, nuclear construction costs are extremely high, often cited around ($6,500) to over ($12,000) per kW.

Construction Time: Solar farms can be built in months (e.g., 9-24 months), whereas nuclear plants frequently take 7 to 10+ years to complete.

Operational Costs: Nuclear has high maintenance, security, and waste disposal costs. Solar requires minimal maintenance and is projected to become even cheaper by 2050. 

[KS Toronado]

12. Welcome to DU !

[hunter]

13. Integrating solar and wind power into a reliable electric grid is expensive.

Nations and states with aggressive renewable energy programs tend to have the most expensive electricity in the "developed" world and rarely reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to the extent it will matter in the long term; the exception being places with extensive hydroelectric resources which are environmentally destructive in their own way.

Disposing of nuclear waste is a solved problem. Disposing of fossil fuel waste is not.

It's always interesting to compare the carbon intensity of electric power generation in nuclear France to Germany or Denmark:

https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/12mo/monthly

Welcome to DU.

In my youth I was a hard-core anti-nuclear activist. Now I'm not.

Renewable energy cannot support earth's current population of 8 billion humans. We've worked ourselves into a corner. If we continue to burn fossil fuels then billions of people will suffer and die. If we don't have reliable large scale energy sources then billions of people will suffer and die.

Nuclear power is the only energy resource capable of displacing fossil fuels entirely. Quitting fossil fuels is something we must do.

[KS Toronado]

19. Why do I keep reading and hearing

renewable energy programs have the LEAST expensive electricity, while Nuclear is the most expensive?

[hunter]

21. It's an accounting trick. Or a damnable lie.

These figures don't account for the dismal capacity factors of wind and solar power and the expensive measures required to deal with that, which usually include fossil fueled "backup power."

If a power network scrimps on the infrastructure required to integrate solar and wind power into it's system it can result in system instabilities that cause large blackouts like the one that occurred on the Iberian Peninsula in April 2025.

One of the fundamental conflicts between nuclear advocates and advocates for solar and wind power is often unspoken. In a complete build-out of nuclear power, one large enough to displace fossil fuels, we also displace solar and wind power.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

20. Welcome to DU

[pat_k]

14. A VERY big deal. Expect another lawsuit that the regime will lose.

They are violating the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) by failing to provide the public with an opportunity to comment on substantive changes, improperly using "interim" designations to bypass notice requirements.

I'm guessing that a brave whistleblower has brought this to media attention.

[yellow dahlia]

18. Such a big deal - for many reasons.

Thanks for citing the relevant act that is being directly violated.

[Kid Berwyn]

17. You say, "Paperwork." I hear, "Profit."

Thus sprach Jared and them there that read.