MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
President Trump is a big believer in nuclear power.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It's a brilliant industry. You have to do it right. And it's become very safe and environmental, yes, a hundred percent.
KELLY: Nuclear is safe in large part because it's one of the most heavily regulated industries in America. Now NPR has learned the Trump administration has rewritten the rules for some nuclear reactors. NPR's Geoff Brumfiel has more.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: To explain how this rewrite happened, first I've got to tell you about the nuclear industry's big bet on something called small modular reactors. They're a new kind of nuclear reactor. They've received billions in venture capital and private investment, in part because these little nuclear plants could power AI data centers. But there's a catch. Many of these reactor designs have never been tested. So last summer, the Department of Energy created a program to build and test at least three by this July 4.
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SETH COHEN: That is the speed at which we are expecting you to move. And our job is to meet you.
BRUMFIEL: That was Seth Cohen, an Energy Department attorney at a recorded meeting with the small reactor companies last June. And in that meeting, Cohen and other officials said that one way they intended to help these new companies is by cutting red tape. Now NPR has learned that the Energy Department has rewritten internal rules for safety, security and environmental protections. They shared them with the companies. But the public hasn't seen the changes until now because NPR obtained copies of the new rules. You can see the changes for yourself at npr.org.
EMILY CAFFREY: This looks like a lot of material. It looks like a lot, and it looks like something that would take years.
BRUMFIEL: That's Emily Caffrey, a health physicist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who says she couldn't believe they'd taken just months to make all these changes to things like groundwater protections. In the old rules that said groundwater, quote, "must be protected from radiological contamination." The new rules say consideration must be given to, quote, "avoiding or minimizing potential contamination." Caffrey says these little tweaks make a big difference.
CAFFREY: Anywhere that they have changed prohibited or must to should be or can be, that is a loosening of regulations.
BRUMFIEL: There were many such examples. But what really got Caffrey was the fact the department made those changes in private.
CAFFREY: Not having any public comment or public input or even having the rules be public seems insane to me. It's very not transparent. And I think transparency is very, very important in the nuclear reactor realm.
KATHRYN HUFF: I can think of a number of reasons why you would promulgate something like this in secret and none of them are great.
BRUMFIEL: Kathryn Huff is a nuclear engineer at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She actually used to run the DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy under President Biden. She knows the people working there, and they're smart. She feels like they're going to be looking out for safety. At the same time...
HUFF: They still need rules. And those rules, like, help to drive that safety culture and really, like, enforce it.
BRUMFIEL: In a statement to NPR, the Department of Energy said it intends to make the rules public, quote, "later this year." The department also said the new rules removed administrative burdens, but they still require the reactors to be safe and secure. The public is overwhelmingly supportive of safe, advanced nuclear reactors, the DOE said in its statement. These new rules, it believes, will help to make them a reality. Geoff Brumfiel, NPR News.
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