- Trump seeks to accelerate new nuclear licenses.
- The order orders the regulatory agency to govern new licenses in 18 months.
- Defense Department that will have an outstanding role in the request for reactors.
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, ordered the independent nuclear regulatory commission of the Nation on Friday that reduces regulations and accelerates new licenses for electric reactors and centrals, seeking to shorten a process from several years to 18 months.
The requirement was part of a lot of executive orders signed by Trump on Friday that aim to boost the production of nuclear energy of the United States in the middle of a boost of the demand centers and artificial intelligence.
Licenses for reactors in the US can sometimes take more than a decade, a process designed to prioritize nuclear safety but has discouraged new projects.
“This will once again return an industry on the regulation of an industry,” he said at the Oval Office of the Oval Office.
The movements include a substantial review of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which includes examining personnel levels and directing the energy and defense departments that work together to build nuclear plants in federal lands.
The Administration provides that the Department of Defense assume an outstanding role in ordering reactors and installing them in military bases, said a senior White House official.
Orders also seek to revitalize uranium production and enrichment in the United States.
The American nuclear energy operator CEO Constellation Energy, Joseph Domínguez, said the president’s actions would help normalize the regulatory process.
“We are wasting too much time to allow ourselves, and we are answering silly questions, not the important ones,” Domínguez said during the signature event.
The United States and other nations have increased the regulation of nuclear energy in recent decades, partly in response to incidents of reactors such as collapse in the Chernobyl plant in the former Soviet Union in 1986, and the partial collapse in the three mile plant on the island in the United States in 1979.
Developers now also seek to display advanced nuclear technology such as small modular reactors (SMR) that could be built quickly and less cost than traditional plants, but that can raise new security challenges.
“To reorganize and reduce the independence of the NRC could lead to the hastive deployment of advanced reactors with security failures,” said Ernest Moniz, former Secretary of Energy of the United States and a nuclear physical that supports the industry.
“An important event, such as those of the past, would increase regulatory requirements and delay nuclear energy for a long time,” he said.
Trump had declared a national energy emergency in January as one of his first acts in office, saying that the United States had inappropriate electricity supplies to meet the country’s growing needs, particularly for data centers that execute artificial intelligence systems.
Most Trump’s actions have focused on increasing fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas, but administration officials also support nuclear energy, which in recent years has attracted the growing bipartisan support.
Some Democrats support nuclear because plants do not emit greenhouse gases heater of planets, even when environmentalists have expressed concerns about radioactive waste and reactor safety.
Republicans, who are less concerned about global warming, support him because they say that nuclear power plants could strengthen the energy security of the United States.
However, costs and competition have been an important impediment to new nuclear projects, and it is not clear if Trump’s orders will be enough to overcome them.
Nuscale SMR.N, the only American company with an SMR design approved by regulators, eliminated its project in 2023 on the increase in costs and competition of plants that burn the abundant natural gas.
Vogtle, the last American reactor that connected, meanwhile, was approximately $ 16 billion over the budget and was delayed for years.
The loan programs office, which the Administration wants to use to finance reactor projects that banks are not willing to support, has been affected by Trump’s work layoffs.
