Trump interference at NRC creating chaos

Mother Jones magazine is reporting that Annie Caputo, one of three currently seated commissioners (two Democrats and one Republican) of the five seats on the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), has announced her resignation in an email sent on July 29, 2025 to the NRC staff.  Republican Commissioner Caputo’s notice reads, “I have decided to resign from the Commission, effective upon the swearing in of my colleague David Wright. The time has come for me to more fully focus on my family.”  The phrase in exiting politics to “more fully focus on my family,” is often recognized as code for disaffection.

Her announcement comes at a most critical time of crisis at the NRC, which has come under a barrage of sweeping Executive Orders from President Trump’s attack as his administration “cleans house” in all of the federal agencies. The President has a particular grudge towards federal agencies such as the NRC deemed by US law as “independent” of the Executive in the White House.

Caputo’s resignation announcement also comes amidst the implementation of the “Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy Act” (ADVANCE) of 2023 signed into law by President Biden. While its bipartisan passage in Congress was nearly unanimous — provoking the question as to whether every congressional office actually read it — the Act is not without controversy. One example is the reversal of a very touchy security concern in the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 that blanketly prohibited the Foreign Ownership, Control, or Domination (FOCD) of domestic US nuclear power stations. That’s gone.

However, Caputo’s resignation letter did voice full support for Trump’s recent executive orders that are viewed by agency watchdogs as bent on undermining the NRC’s safety oversight, spread new reactor license power to the US Department of Energy and Department of the Army and severely truncating the NRC license review process of the country’s inherently dangerous reactors. In the Commissioner Caputo’s stated view,  the Trump Orders, along with the congressional passage of the ADVANCE Act “have given the agency a platform for change.” More outrageously in our view, Caputo praised “last week’s historical authorization of the Palisades plant’s return to operational service.” Ominously, if that does happen, Palisades will be the first reactor in the US to have been “certified” by the NRC to be permanently closed and its “possession only” license transferred to a decommissioning company, but then reopened as its new owners transformed into a nuclear power plant operator. Palisades has one of, if not the most, radiation embrittled and damaged reactor pressure vessel in the aging US nuclear fleet.

As Substack columnist, Alexander C. Kaufman, whose article Mother Jones republished, reported: “The NRC is under full-scale attack from a bunch of folks who don’t seem to understand the crucial role the NRC plays in protecting nuclear energy from endless, arbitrary legal attack and investment-killing uncertainty,’ Mark Nelson, the founder of the nuclear consultancy Radiant Energy Group, told me.”

While the Mother Jones article is headlined “Resignation of a Top US Nuclear Regulator Seen as an Attack on Agency Independence,” let’s get something clear.

Apparently, Mr. Nelson is not talking about President Trump’s and the nuclear industry’s agenda to  dismantle a “risk averse” NRC because of a much touted focus on safety oversight that’s been further blunted by the Trump orders and the same ADVANCED Act that Commissioner Caputo supports.

The “arbitrary legal attack” that Mr. Nelson seems to be referring to is actually more like the lawsuit brought by Beyond Nuclear and the Sierra Club and currently before the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for the NRC’s repeated and deliberate failure to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Beyond Nuclear is requesting the federal court conduct a judicial review of the NRC’s failure to consider the impacts of climate change (sea-level rise, more severe hurricanes, unprecedented flooding, wild fires etc.),  on the increased risk and frequency of severe nuclear accidents  as the agency relicenses nuclear power plant operating permits out to 2050s and beyond. That is not an “arbitrary legal attack” as this is prime time for  public safety and environmental interests  to get legal standing and public hearings with contentions before the NRC.

As told to Kaufman, “’Caputo apparently resigned rather than be compromised by politics of NRC independence destruction,’ he [Nelson] added. ‘The NRC helps ensure that there is only a tiny, extremely tough attack surface for antinuclear legal efforts to target.’”

What appears to be clearly illegal, however, is the Trump Administration’s clear violation of US Supreme Court case law by firing the former Democratic NRC commissioner, Christopher Hanson in June 2025, without any cause, thereby vacating a seat for another Republican nominee selected by the President. Republican Chairman David Wright was just renominated as NRC Chairman by President Trump and  contested confirmation by a full US Senate vote but is not yet seated due to paperwork that is still processing.

That said, it’s not beyond reason that Commissioner Caputo’s resignation announcement  might have something to do with her frustration that she was snubbed as Trump’s pick for NRC Chair in reappointing Wright to that position.

The record clearly reflects Commissioner Caputo’s devotion throughout her career as an nuclear power advocate, beginning as an executive assistant and congressional affairs manager for one of the largest nuclear power company operators in the world, first as Commonwealth Edison, then Exelon Energy, now known as Constellation Energy. Ms. Caputo then moved on to Capitol Hill, where she worked for 13 years in two stints with the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce on nuclear energy regulation, policy development, legislation, and communications. She next became senior policy advisor to Senator Jim Inhofe  (R-OK) from 2007 to 2012, when he chaired the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, which oversees NRC purse strings and the vetting of the President picks for  commissioners.

She then served as NRC commissioner from 2018 to 2021, before being renominated and confirmed in  2022 for a five-year term that had been due to expire on June 30, 2026. 

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Photo: US Nuclear Regulatory Commission