The Trump administration has overhauled a set of nuclear safety directives and shared them with the companies it is charged with regulating, without making the new rules available to the public, according to documents obtained exclusively by NPR.
The sweeping changes were made to accelerate development of a new generation of nuclear reactor designs. They occurred over the fall and winter at the Department of Energy, which is currently overseeing a program to build at least three new experimental commercial nuclear reactors by July 4 of this year.
The changes are to departmental orders, which dictate requirements for almost every aspect of the reactors' operations — including safety systems, environmental protections, site security and accident investigations.
NPR obtained copies of over a dozen of the new orders, none of which is publicly available. The orders slash hundreds of pages of requirements for security at the reactors. They also loosen protections for groundwater and the environment and eliminate at least one key safety role. The new orders cut back on requirements for keeping records, and they raise the amount of radiation a worker can be exposed to before an official accident investigation is triggered.
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