Last summer at Idaho National Laboratory, 31-year-old lawyer Seth Cohen — a newcomer from the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency with little nuclear experience — led a Department of Energy meeting on the future of U.S. nuclear power. Records and interviews reviewed by ProPublica show Cohen downplaying radiation and safety questions, at one point dismissing concerns about downwind communities and joking about transcription. He has since become chief counsel for nuclear policy at DOE.
The pattern around that meeting reflects a broader, rapid push by the Trump administration to remake nuclear regulation to speed construction of advanced reactors, especially to supply growing demand from AI data centers. Internal documents and interviews describe a politically driven campaign that has included firing or sidelining career officials, inserting political operatives into rulemaking, and fast-tracking rewrites of safety and licensing rules. Critics warn those moves risk weakening the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s long-standing independence and safety culture.
The NRC has long been regarded internationally as a gold-standard regulator. Observers caution that past nuclear disasters — including Fukushima and Chernobyl — were in part linked to regulatory capture and close industry-regulator ties, a historical lesson cited by those alarmed at the current direction. In June, President Trump fired NRC Commissioner Christopher Hanson after Hanson defended agency independence — the first firing of an NRC commissioner. Since Trump returned to office, more than 400 people have left the NRC, with especially steep losses among reactor and materials safety teams and seasoned staffers with a decade or more of experience. Hiring has slowed markedly: the first year of the administration brought roughly 60 new hires compared with nearly 350 in the last year of the previous administration.
The administration’s approach has been shaped by Silicon Valley investors and venture capitalists who have backed advanced-reactor startups. Billionaires such as Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, both Trump supporters and nuclear investors, have pushed for faster approvals and lighter regulation; Andreessen helped staff parts of the administration, and Thiel reportedly vetted DOE candidates. Startups and their backers have gained privileged access to draft executive orders and DOE programs that create testing pathways and ‘concierge’ assistance through the department bureaucracy.
Trump signed orders aimed at quadrupling nuclear output and accelerating approval timelines. The DOE was directed to carve out testing pathways for advanced-reactor companies; the NRC was urged to speed approvals and rewrite safety rules. The White House and DOE say these steps are urgent to meet AI data-center demand and achieve ‘energy dominance.’ Opponents say a Silicon Valley ‘move fast’ ethos is being applied to one of the most safety-critical infrastructures.
Political operatives and relatively inexperienced hires — including recent law graduates and people without nuclear backgrounds — have been placed into rulewriting and oversight roles at DOE and NRC. DOGE operatives attended NRC meetings, and Cohen and others have mingled with NRC staff. In one episode Cohen handed out branded hats from Valar Atomics, a startup, prompting NRC ethics warnings and anger among career staff who see such gestures as incompatible with regulator neutrality.
Valar and other startups are backed by prominent tech investors; some sued the NRC seeking to shift regulatory authority to states. That suit and settlement negotiations coincided with personnel changes at the agency, and a career lawyer who worked on the case quietly left the NRC. Regulatory rewrites underway include thousands of pages on safety, emergency preparedness, and licensing procedures, with drafts reportedly proposing steep cuts to inspection times and other rollback measures. Lawyers from the White House’s Executive Office have been reported in rulemaking meetings, raising questions about agency independence even as the White House denies dispatching lawyers to work on rulemaking.
A major technical controversy centers on proposals to raise legal limits on public radiation exposure and to abandon the ALARA principle (As Low As Reasonably Achievable), which aims to keep exposures well below thresholds. DOE memos argue that relaxing dose limits and reducing shielding could cut reactor costs by roughly $1–2 million each, or about 5% of some project budgets; one internal discussion reportedly considered a fivefold increase in allowable public exposure and framed dose changes as a ‘business case.’ Experts warn such moves could put U.S. standards out of step with international practice.
An Idaho National Laboratory report cited in DOE documents was produced with the assistance of an AI tool, and radiation experts have criticized the science and interpretation used to justify the proposed changes. The DOE has been accused of sidelining internal health experts and reducing outside expert input.
Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, who stepped down from the board of Oklo when confirmed, has publicly emphasized speed: ‘We are moving as quickly as we can to permit, build and enable the rapid construction of as much nuke capacity as possible.’ Symbolic episodes have included a military airlift that transported Valar’s untested reactor and public postings by Cohen from the cargo bay. Cohen has argued regulators should not be barriers to industry and has likened the effort to early, failure-prone eras of commercial space development; he also opposed proposed industry trust funds for workplace accidents.
Alarmed voices include former NRC chair Allison Macfarlane, who said the regulator ‘is no longer an independent regulator,’ and former DOE official Kathryn Huff, who warned regulatory capture has been linked to past disasters. Some pro-nuclear groups that favor faster timelines nonetheless stress that preserving NRC independence is essential for public trust.
Supporters counter that the NRC’s rules were written for large light-water reactors and are ill-suited to modern small modular and advanced designs; they argue sensors, modeling and controls justify modernized rules and faster licensing. DOE and White House spokespeople say they are prioritizing safety while removing unnecessary bureaucracy.
As rule changes proceed, final authority rests with the NRC’s five commissioners, three of whom are Republican appointees. Two Democratic commissioners have warned they could be fired if they oppose the agenda. Career lawyers’ recent withdrawal from an Atomic Safety and Licensing Board hearing underscored internal strain.
The convergence of Silicon Valley capital and political influence on an industry with high public-safety stakes has raised a central question: will the U.S. accelerate advanced reactors while preserving the protective regulatory culture that has helped prevent major nuclear incidents, or will deregulatory pressure and political appointments erode safeguards in ways critics fear could repeat past failures?
