Secretly rewritten nuclear safety rules are made public

"The rule changes came about after President Trump signed an executive order calling for three or more of the experimental reactors to come online by July 4 of this year—an incredibly tight deadline in the world of nuclear power. The order led to the creation of a new Reactor Pilot Program at the Department of Energy."

"To help facilitate Trump's deadline, Energy Department officials rewrote the internal rules. It shared the rules with ten companies who were part of the pilot program, but the rewritten rules, and even their existence, was not known to the public until NPR obtained copies of them."

"The pilot program extends that authority to a larger set of experimental commercial designs. It also expands where those reactors can be built: several are under construction outside of the department's national laboratories."

The Department of Energy has publicly released new rules that reduce environmental and security requirements for experimental nuclear reactors. These rule changes were implemented to accelerate development of next-generation reactor designs and meet an executive order requiring three or more experimental reactors to be operational by July 4. The changes created a new Reactor Pilot Program that extends Energy Department authority beyond government laboratories to commercial reactor designs under construction elsewhere. Energy Department officials rewrote internal rules and shared them with ten participating companies, but kept the changes and rules hidden from public view until NPR obtained copies through a Freedom of Information Act request. The rules are now available on Idaho National Laboratory's website.

Read at www.npr.org