WASHINGTON: The President of the United States, Donald Trump, ordered the country’s independent nuclear regulatory committee on Friday to reduce regulations and acidic licenses for reactors and power plants, seeking to shorten a multi-year process at 18 months.
The obligation was part of a batch of decrees signed by Trump on Friday which aim to stimulate the production of nuclear energy in the United States in the midst of a boom of demand from data centers and artificial intelligence.
Licenses for reactors in the United States can sometimes take more than a decade, a process designed to prioritize nuclear security but which has discouraged new projects.
“This will put the clock back on more than 50 years of over-regulation of an industry,” said the United States secretary, Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum, who heads the White House Domination Council, in the oval office.
The measures include a substantial overhaul of the nuclear regulatory committee, in particular by examining the levels of personnel and by ordering the energy and defense services to work together to build nuclear power plants on federal land.
The Administration plans that the Ministry of Defense occupies a leading role in the reactor order and installing them on military bases, said a senior white house official.
Orders also seek to invigorate the production and enrichment of uranium in the United States.
The CEO of the American nuclear operator Constellation Energy, Joseph Dominguez, said that the president’s actions would help normalize the regulatory process.
“We waste too much time on the license, and we answer silly questions, not important,” said Dominguez at the signature event.
The United States and other nations have increased nuclear powers’ regulations in recent decades, in part in response to reactor incidents such as the collapse of the Chernobyl factory in the former Soviet Union in 1986, and with the partial collapse of the three-thousand factory in the United States in 1979.
Developers also seek to deploy advanced nuclear technology such as small modular reactors (SMR) which could potentially be built quickly and cheaper than traditional plants, but which can apply new safety challenges.
“The reorganization and reduction of CNRC independence could lead to the hasty deployment of advanced reactors with security and security defects,” said Ernest Moniz, former secretary in the United States of energy and nuclear physicist favorable to industry.
“A major event would increase, like those in the past, would increase regulatory requirements and have long been returning nuclear energy,” he said.
Trump had declared a national energy emergency in January as one of his first power acts, saying that the United States had insufficient electricity supplies to meet the growing needs of the country, especially for data centers that manage 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 has attracted increasing bipartisan support in recent years.
Some Democrats approve nuclear because factories do not emit planet warming greenhouse gases, even if environmentalists have raised concerns about radioactive waste and reactor safety.
Republicans, who are less concerned with global warming, support it because they say that nuclear power plants could strengthen American energy security.
The cost and competition, however, have been a major obstacle to new nuclear projects, and it is not clear if Trump’s orders will be sufficient to overcome them.
Nuscale SMR.N, the only American company with an SMR design approved by regulators, canceled its project in 2023 on the rise in costs and competition from plants that burn abundant natural gas.
Vogtle, the last American reactor to come online, was around $ 16 billion on the budget and delayed by years.
The loan programs office, which the administration wishes to use to finance reactor projects that banks are not willing to support, has been touched by Trump’s employment layoffs.
