A ​‘wholesale revision’ of US nuclear rules is on the table

The top U.S. nuclear regulator wants to make it easier to build and operate nuclear power plants in this country — without compromising public health or safety.

That’s the TL;DR of a proposed rule that would reduce reporting requirements for nonemergency events, eliminate the expiration date for standard design approvals for reactors, increase staffing flexibility in reactor control rooms, and modify seismic risk requirements, among other changes to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s voluminous regulatory code.

The 339-page tome is the newest of several dozen NRC rulemakings initiated since last May, when President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the commission to implement sweeping regulatory reforms by the end of 2026. The order, which also made it official U.S. government policy to quadruple the country’s commercial nuclear reactor fleet by 2050, kicked off what one expert told Canary Media is likely the busiest period for the NRC since the early days of the nuclear power industry.

“This is a wholesale revision of NRC rules and guidance,” said Patrick White, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology–trained nuclear scientist who is group lead in the Clean Air Task Force’s nuclear energy practice.

The NRC is ​“trying to look top to bottom and say, ​‘What changes do we need to make to the regulatory system if we want to accelerate deployment of nuclear?’ You’re seeing everything done at once,” White added.

The Trump administration’s push for NRC reforms comes amid broad agreement that the U.S. needs more electricity generation, and as the administration continues to throw up obstacles to renewables and batteries, which are the cheapest, fastest, and cleanest resources available to deploy right now. Though only a handful of nuclear reactors are under construction in the U.S. today, and experts expect few if any to come online before 2030, Trump’s support for nuclear marks a rare point of alignment with decarbonization advocates — and a potential lifeline for the country’s clean energy transition.

Nuclear power regs for the 21st century

Earlier this year, the NRC wrapped up previously authorized work on a new licensing pathway for advanced nuclear reactors and jump-started the development of a second pathway for ​“low-consequence microreactors.” It has also initiated several significant rulemakings under Trump’s executive order. Each package runs hundreds of pages and contains multiple proposals for new or updated nuclear regulations.

Of these, a comprehensive update to existing licensing regulations is one of the most potentially beneficial proposed changes for companies looking to build new nuclear reactors, said Lara Nichols, a former Duke Energy executive who’s now a partner with the law firm Troutman Pepper Locke.

For example, one proposed change would increase reactor developers’ flexibility to make design changes during construction without having to ask the NRC for permission. That could avoid the sort of situation Westinghouse and its partners found themselves in while building the United States’ first two AP-1000 reactors in Georgia during the 2010s and early 2020s. Lengthy NRC design modification reviews helped push those reactors’ delivery dates nearly a decade beyond original estimates.

Other regulation updates would expand the type of site work that license applicants can do before receiving full approval from the NRC to begin reactor construction, and also revise emergency preparedness requirements to accommodate the wider range of reactor technologies expected to reach commercial operation in the coming years.

Newer reactors, including the AP-1000, generally have ​“passive safety systems” that lower the risk of catastrophic accidents, reducing the need for the sorts of safeguards required of reactors designed in the 20th century.

Another set of proposed changes would make it easier for existing nuclear power plants to address physical security and earthquake mitigation requirements, which could help decrease plants’ operating costs if they can find a way to meet the modified standards with fewer staff, Nichols said in an email.

A separate revision to the NRC’s nearly 40-year-old ​“backfitting” rule would reduce nuclear plants’ compliance burdens when the agency issues new or revised regulations. On paper, that could be ​“one of the most potentially beneficial proposed changes” for existing nuclear power plants, though a lot rides on how NRC employees interpret the revised rule, Nichols said.

“The realized benefits will depend on how these changes, if approved, are implemented in the field by NRC inspectors,” she said.

One particularly controversial change would replace the NRC’s long-standing ​“as low as reasonably achievable” standards for radiation protection with ​“clearer, more objective requirements” that the agency says would be ​“set well below levels associated with known health effects.”

The incumbent standard, known as ALARA, has been an enduring target for industry groups like the Nuclear Energy Institute. It asks license holders to make ​“every reasonable effort” to keep public and employee exposure to X-rays and other forms of high-energy radiation as far below its annual dose limits as practically possible.

In a far-reaching paper last year pushing for comprehensive NRC reforms, the Nuclear Energy Institute said updating the ​“overly restrictive” and inconsistently applied standard would improve ​“efficiency, flexibility, clarity, and … deployment of modern nuclear technologies while maintaining safety.”

The NRC said much the same in its July 1 proposal to replace ALARA with a ​“graded approach” to radiation safety.

Among other changes, the new approach would allow nuclear power plant employees to exceed the annual dose limit as long as their average annual exposure remains below the threshold over a five-year period. That would give workers and plant operators more flexibility during plant maintenance cycles, when radiation exposure tends to increase, according to an American Nuclear Society brief on the proposed rule.

Will revising ALARA speed up nuclear deployment? 

Some industry analysts say, however, that eliminating the ALARA standard won’t on its own enable new reactor construction. The move would save the nuclear industry about $9.53 million annually, according to NRC estimates — peanuts next to the multibillion-dollar cost to build even a modest-size nuclear power plant. The NRC estimates its latest, lower-profile package of proposed reforms would reduce costs industrywide by $15.1 million to $22.2 million per year.

Neither ALARA nor the latest proposed reforms would be a game changer, said Andrew Kleiman, an energy transition research analyst with the global energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie.

“Impacts of the proposed rule on costs are marginal. … [The] level of savings across the entire industry is not likely enough to move the needle for any single project,” Kleiman said in an email.

The Clean Air Task Force’s White said eliminating the ALARA standard would neither reset reactor economics to developers’ benefit nor materially affect operational safety for current and future reactors. But it could still be a big deal for the industry, and not necessarily for the better, he said.

“It is potentially very impactful — not because it’s going to significantly reduce the cost of nuclear energy or significantly change operations, but because it becomes a major signaling issue,” White said.

In other words, in appearing to relax its commitment to radiological safety, the NRC could feed public unease about its independence in the Trump era. So could another regulatory reform project that the nuclear industry has long pushed for: simplifying environmental reviews for new reactors.

In last year’s paper, the Nuclear Energy Institute said streamlining environmental reviews, simplifying public hearings, and ​“modernizing oversight” would allow regulators to focus more on issues with direct bearing on nuclear safety. Andrew Mauer, the group’s senior director of regulatory affairs, echoed that sentiment in an email to Canary Media this month.

“NEI supports efforts to enhance regulatory efficiency by retaining safety-significant requirements, reducing inefficient administrative burdens, and aligning NRC regulations with current practices and Executive Orders,” Mauer said.

Another significant change would narrow the scope of the NRC’s environmental reviews for new reactors. Until now, those reviews have been lengthy, far-reaching processes that involve evaluating not just the physical safety of a facility itself but also the ecological impact, construction dust and noise, and water and air quality effects not related to the radioactive material on-site.

In July, the NRC proposed dispensing with those aspects and focusing its environmental reviews largely on radiation-related health, safety, and security issues, according to an analysis by the law firm Holland & Knight that described the changes as ​“potentially transformative.”

The proposed rule would also allow applicants seeking to renew existing reactors’ operating licenses or obtain fresh construction permits or early site permits — wherein the NRC deems a particular site suitable for new reactor construction without granting permission to move dirt — to apply for ​“categorical exclusions” to National Environmental Policy Act review, further reducing the environmental review burden, according to Holland & Knight’s analysis.

Narrowing the scope of NRC environmental reviews could significantly reduce license applicants’ paperwork burden and their risk of being sued later, Holland & Knight attorneys Andy Kriha, Jason Hill, and Elizabeth Leoty Craddock wrote in July.

White agreed that the proposal would streamline NRC assessments of new reactors’ environmental impacts. What’s less clear is whether an NRC perceived to be more deferential to reactor developers could increase public skepticism of an industry that currently enjoys bipartisan support.

“There is a concern that it could become counterproductive if it starts to increase public concern around siting and permitting of nuclear power plants,” he said, referring to the proposed environmental review changes. ​“Is that going to affect public confidence in these projects?”

And if the public begins to sour on the NRC and the nuclear industry writ large, the agency’s newfound nimbleness could work against it, White added.

“The NRC can be forced to change very, very quickly, but does that mean future administrations could change it in the other direction very quickly?” White asked, rhetorically. ​“What happens if you start an application now, only to have a shift in policy under a new administration in 2028?”