President Donald Trump is expected to sign multiple executive orders on Friday designed to unleash a “nuclear renaissance” by clearing substantial regulatory hurdles that often hold back nuclear development.
The four executive orders allow for the expansion of nuclear power by empowering the Department of Energy (DOE) to lead nuclear research and development projects, instructing other federal agencies to promote nuclear energy and related research or work as appropriate and overhauling the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), a senior White House official told reporters Friday. Additionally, Trump will sign an executive order promoting “Gold Standard Science” intended to help the U.S. lead the world in research and science.
“Today, President Trump is taking historic action to ensure America’s energy dominance and provide affordable, reliable, safe and secure energy to the American people,” president and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Michael Kratsios told reporters Friday. “With these actions, President Trump is showing the world that America will build again, and that the American nuclear renaissance can begin.
“America’s great innovators and entrepreneurs have run into brick walls when it comes to nuclear technologies,” Kratsios continued. “From 1950 onward, America led the world in nuclear innovation, building more than 100 reactors over the next 30 years. However, in the last 30 years, we started and built only two. We decommissioned commercial reactors across the country, stepped back from research and development, and abandoned hopes of nuclear energy powering a bright future.”
One executive order will pave the way for domestic energy expansion through speeding up nuclear technology testing at DOE sites and enabling a pilot program for construction over the next two years, according to the senior White House official. Another will clear regulations to allow for reactors to be built on federal lands, specifically DOE and Department of Defense sites, the White House official said.
A third order will require the NRC to make decisions on nuclear licenses within 18 months, and call for a reform of NRC culture to be more inclined to develop nuclear technology, according to the senior White House official.
The NRC said that it is reviewing the orders and looks forward to working with the administration on nuclear issues.
“The NRC is assessing the executive orders and will comply with [White House] directives,” a spokesperson for the NRC said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “We look forward to continuing to work with the Administration, DOE and DOD on future nuclear programs.”
The other two executive orders would focus on mining and enriching uranium and ordering federal research institutions to reform their science research to adopt “Gold Standard Science,” which Kratsios spoke about at the National Academy of Sciences on Monday.
The senior White House official defined “Gold Standard Science” as “reproducible, transparent and falsifiable” science that is subject to peer review and not marred by conflicts of interest.
Most reactors in the United States are 42 years old on average, and only two new reactors have been built in the last 30 years, as Krastios stated, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Electricity demand is on the rise in the U.S. and projected to grow even more in the coming years. Officials in the Trump administration and energy policy experts have been warning that the nation is in need of more base load power.
Immediately after returning to the White House in January, Trump declared a national energy emergency, stating that “the integrity and expansion of our Nation’s energy infrastructure” is “an immediate and pressing priority for the protection of the United States’ national and economic security.”
“The long-awaited American nuclear renaissance must launch during President Trump’s administration,” Wright stated on Feb. 5 in his first secretarial order. “As global energy demand continues to grow, America must lead the commercialization of affordable and abundant nuclear energy. As such, the Department will work diligently and creatively to enable the rapid deployment and export of next-generation nuclear technology.”
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