President Trump on Friday signed executive orders that seek to quadruple the nation’s nuclear power, including by cutbacks to health and environmental considerations.
In one such executive order, Trump laments that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) radiation safety standards are too stringent.
“The NRC utilizes safety models that posit there is no safe threshold of radiation exposure and that harm is directly proportional to the amount of exposure,” the order states.
“A myopic policy of minimizing even trivial risks ignores the reality that substitute forms of energy production also carry risk, such as pollution with potentially deleterious health effects,” it says
Accordingly, the order directs the NRC, an independent agency that regulates nuclear safety, to reconsider its “as low as reasonably achievable” radiation standard and its assumption that radiation and exposure and cancer risk have a linear relationship.
The order also directs the agency to make decisions on whether to approve licenses for new nuclear reactors within 18 months — a process that typically takes multiple years and involves both safety and environmental reviews.
The environmental review process alone typically takes two to three years.
It calls for the nation to quadruple its current nuclear energy capacity by 2050.
The order also directs the agency to carry out reductions in force and specifically says that staffing and functions agency’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, which provides advice on hazards and radiation protection, among other topics, should be “reduced to the minimum necessary to fulfill … statutory obligations.”
Another order says that the Energy Department should use authorities granted by the Defense Production Act to seek agreements with nuclear energy companies to enable the government to procure uranium for nuclear weapons
Welcome to The Hill’s Energy & Environment newsletter, I’m Rachel Frazin — keeping you up to speed on the policies impacting everything from oil and gas to new supply chains.
Programming note: This newsletter will be off Monday for Memorial Day. We’ll be back Tuesday.
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