Ensuring a meltdown: Trump’s reckless nuclear orders

On March 23, President Trump signed five executive orders that threaten to roll back US nuclear energy policy at least 50 years. The orders are: Restoring Gold Standard Science; Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base; Reforming Nuclear Reactor Testing at the Department of Energy; and Deploying Advanced Nuclear Reactor Technologies for National Security. Collectively, they would reduce and undermine the safety oversight authority of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission; fast-track unproven new reactor projects without regard for safety, health or environment; restart closed reactors and complete unfinished projects; impede public intervention; and reopen the pathway between the civil and military sectors, all while putting nuclear power expansion on a dangerous and unrealistic accelerated timeline.