Trump DOGE to NRC: “rubber stamp” nuclear power

On July 14, 2025, E&ENews by Politico featured a news story with the headline “DOGE told regulator to ‘rubber stamp’ nuclear.”  The Politico article explains that President Trump implanted a representative from the White House executive branch of his US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to execute White House Executive Orders to “reform” the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The May 23, 2025 Executive Orders aim to accelerate the Administration’s  and his loyalists in Congress’ agenda for  an unfettered expansion of new nuclear power plant and faster license renewals. Politico spoke with three anonymous NRC staffers,  because of the sensitivity of the subject matter, who had participated in an undated May 2025 meeting at NRC headquarters between the DOGE representative identified as Adam Blake and then NRC Chairman David Wright (at this time, David Wright is still awaiting a full Senate vote to confirm his renomination and Senate committee approval for another five-year term on the Commission). The NRC staffers told Politico that in the May meeting, Chairman Wright and his staff were instructed to quickly align the agency with the President Trump’s new energy program.  “A DOGE representative told the chair and top staff of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the agency will be expected to give ‘rubber stamp’ approval to new reactors tested by the departments of Energy or Defense, according to three people with knowledge of a May meeting where the message was delivered,” reported E&ENews.

The article goes on to report that one of the sources familiar with meeting said “‘The DOE (Department of Energy) and the DOD (Department of Defense) would approve stuff, and then NRC would be expected to just kind of rubber-stamp it,’ said one of the three people, who were all granted anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue,” Politico confirmed. The DOGE representative was attributed to have used the words “rubber stamp” in his instruction to the Chairman Wright and and NRC staff.

US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D/RI), himself a strong advocate for the expansion of US nuclear energy policy but capable of delivering scolding criticism [watch time mark @ 13:16 of 50:15] to the NRC as a seated member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee which oversees the NRC, called out President Trump’s  DOGE and  Department of Energy’s taking direct control of the NRC, not “reform,” but  a “hostile takeover.” If this, what appears to be a blatant rebuke of an act of Congress  by the White House and likely illegal takeover, sticks, it could spell the end of the nuclear power industry’s current honeymoon of undeserved public trust as well as any semblance of the US having an “independent” federal nuclear agency. The Trump White House will be left to oversee this latest, most  dangerous and reckless financial fleecing of federal taxpayers and electric ratepayers to steamroll the next attempt to accelerate US nuclear power expansion.

Ironically, it was the  congressional passage of the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 that abolished the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) on October 11, 1974 because of its built-in contradiction where the same federal agency could simultaneously  promote the rapid expansion of nuclear energy and regulate commercial nuclear power to protect  public safety and the environment. In order to restore some “reasonable assurance” of safety in reactor operations and transparency in the nuclear regulatory process, the Reorganization Act dismantled and split the failed AEC into the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Energy Resource and Development Administration (ERDA) which was  briefly the precursor agency to the Department of Energy  often referenced as the Energy Department.

Just over fifty years later, the Department of Energy, launched by President Trump’s Executive Order and Department  of Defense now seek to nullify the  last vestiges of  independence of the NRC regulatory oversight and nuclear safety evaluation in order for the White House and its loyalist led  Congressional agenda to accelerate the commercial and military nuclear  power agenda.