Trump’s Nuclear Watchdog Puts A Clock On Legal Fights That Can Stall New Reactors

Federal nuclear regulators are setting deadlines for licensing challenges that can hold up new reactors as the Trump administration seeks faster approvals.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) published a final rule in the Federal Register Tuesday that aims to wrap up most contested licensing hearings in 11 to 13.5 months, and faster for expedited cases.

Within that process, the agency’s current model schedule envisions about nine months for evidentiary hearings, and in practice that phase “has on average taken substantially longer,” according to the rule. Most proceedings will now get 3.5 to 4.5 months for that phase.

Contested hearings involve a person or group challenging part of a license application, according to the rule. An independent NRC board usually decides whether to admit the claim and, if it does, holds an evidentiary hearing on it.

“In 2024, Congress passed the ADVANCE Act which gave the NRC some timelines to get licenses out more quickly,” NRC General Counsel Matt Pociask said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Those timelines were reinforced in Executive Order 14300 by this Administration to also get licenses out more quickly.”

“To meet the commands of that statute and this Executive Order, we couldn’t allow hearings to stretch on and on and on,” Pociask added.

The final rule “maintains the public’s ability to participate and the requirements for what a member of the public needs to show in order to get into a hearing,” the agency said in a statement to the DCNF.

Under the rule, groups keep 60 days to request a hearing on most applications to build reactors that do not use an already certified design, but the window shrinks to 45 days for license renewals and some other cases.

Uranium Watch, a Moab, Utah, nonprofit that works on uranium mining and milling issues, opposed the plan and argued that faster hearings would undercut the agency’s work protecting public health and safety, according to its public comments on the plan.