WASHINGTON: Licensing for reactors in the US can take over a decade at times, a process designed to prioritize nuclear safety but which has discouraged new projects.
“This is going to turn the clock back on over 50 years of overregulation of an industry,” United States Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who heads the White House Energy Dominance Council, said in the Oval Office.
The moves include a substantial overhaul of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, including examining staffing levels and directing the Energy and Defense departments to work together to build nuclear plants on federal lands.
The administration envisions the Department of Defence taking a prominent role in ordering reactors and installing them on military bases, a senior White House official said.
The orders also seek to reinvigorate uranium production and enrichment in the United States.
The CEO of US nuclear power operator Constellation Energy, Joseph Dominguez, said the president’s actions would help normalize the regulatory process.
“We’re wasting too much time on permitting, and we’re answering silly questions, not the important ones,” Dominguez said during the signing event.
The US and other nations have ramped up nuclear power regulation in recent decades, partly in response to reactor incidents like the meltdown at the Chernobyl plant in the former Soviet Union in 1986, and the partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in the United States in 1979.
Developers are also now looking to deploy advanced nuclear technology like small modular reactors (SMRs) that could potentially be built quickly and at less cost than traditional plants, but which may pose new safety challenges.
“Reorganizing and reducing the independence of the NRC could lead to the hasty deployment of advanced reactors with safety and security flaws,” said Ernest Moniz, former US Energy Secretary and a nuclear physicist supportive of the industry.
United States President Donald Trump on Friday ordered the nation’s independent nuclear regulatory commission to reduce regulations and fast-track new licenses for reactors and power plants, seeking to shorten a multi-year process to 18 months.
The requirement was part of a batch of executive orders signed by Trump on Friday that aim to boost United States nuclear energy production amid a boom in demand from data centres and artificial intelligence.