NRC updates: New chair, rule reversal, and EO planning

New leadership: Ho Nieh has officially been designated the 20th chair of the NRC by President Trump. He replaces David Wright, who was named chair by Trump on January 21, 2025. Wright will continue to serve as a commissioner. Nieh was confirmed on November 19, 2025, as a commissioner to serve through the remainder of a term that will expire June 30, 2029. This latest shakeup comes shortly after Douglas Weaver’s December 2025 confirmation, an event which finally brought the NRC back to its full complement of five commissioners.

On his promotion, Nieh said, “I look forward to continuing to work with the dedicated NRC staff and my fellow commissioners, and I am energized by what we will accomplish together to enable the safe and secure use of nuclear technologies. With the support of Executive Order 14300 and the ADVANCE Act, the NRC is designing the future of nuclear safety regulation.”

Sunset reversal: On December 11, 2025, the NRC announced its plan to issue a “sunset rule” that would effectively nullify certain regulations in no more than five years. This move was in response to President Trump’s EO 14270, “Zero-Based Regulatory Budgeting to Unleash American Energy.”

The NRC clarified that the selection of rules for sunsetting was not set in stone, and if any of the recommended changes received significant public backlash, it would take it under consideration.

Most rules that the NRC elected to sunset were deemed unnecessary because they were duplicative in nature, had not been used in several decades (or ever), or were otherwise obsolete.

One regulation, however, stood apart as a more significant change in the domestic nuclear industry—§ 50.150, “Aircraft impact assessment,” which required applicants to perform a design-specific assessment that showed that a reactor core would remain cooled or containment would remain intact in the event of a large commercial aircraft impacting its facility.

In the weeks that followed the Federal Register listing, the NRC received comments that were “significant and adverse” enough to cancel its plans to sunset § 50.150. The NRC also stated that the remainder of its proposed changes did not receive significant backlash and will become effective as scheduled.

Future collaboration: Perhaps the most important of the three announcements is the NRC’s issuance of new staff guidance that establishes expectations for working with reactor vendors who leverage authorizations from the Departments of Energy and/or Defense in moving their designs toward commercialization.

These new guidelines are a direct response to one of the four nuclear-related executive orders Trump signed last May: EO 14300, “Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” which seeks to reduce regulatory barriers to the development of advanced nuclear technologies. The directive addressed the NRC's lengthy and costly licensing process, structure, and culture.

Pushing reform at the NRC is not the only way this administration has worked to build nuclear momentum. It has also made several big bets on DOE and DOD pilot programs that grant approval to advanced test reactors through authorization rather than standard NRC permitting.

Throughout the past year, the landscape of DOE and DOD nuclear authorization programs has evolved at a dizzying speed. As these authorization programs have seen several projects progressing toward deployment in the next one to five years, a significant question has been left largely unanswered: What will the NRC approval process look like for successful DOE and DOD pilots that then seek broader commercial deployment of their designs?

Some companies involved in authorization programs indicated that they have been collaborating in some voluntary capacity with the NRC as they develop their projects. Oklo, for example, said that it planned to “continue coordination with the NRC throughout the process” of building its Aurora-INL project. In a more concrete example, Aalo Atomics hosted a number of NRC observers alongside DOE reviewers at its preliminary design review for its Aalo-X project.

Still, what the future of actual NRC collaboration looked like was largely left to speculation until the issuance of this new staff guidance, which directly answers that question.

The NRC’s big picture answer is perhaps best summarized by Mike King, the NRC’s executive director for operations, who said yesterday, “As we conduct our independent reviews, we will focus on risks associated with commercializing these designs, leveraging insights from [the Departments of Energy and Defense] reviews to avoid duplicating efforts. This collaboration will make our reviews more efficient and effective and strengthen our ability to ensure safety as these innovative technologies move towards deployment.”

The details: The staff guidance issued by the NRC places a large emphasis on NRC observation of DOE and DOD projects throughout their phases of approval and construction, specifically stating that NRC observation throughout the authorization process will directly support a vendor’s future NRC licensing plans, and the onus will be on vendors to request NRC observers at various parts of the authorization process. The NRC, for its part, will coordinate with vendors to identify the relevant points where NRC staff observation would yield the most benefit to both parties.

The nature of that observation is also clearly defined in the recommendation: “In order to ensure a clear delineation in regulatory authority, the NRC staff assigned to observe the authorization process should limit participation to asking questions to increase understanding of key concepts of the design.”

The NRC also clarifies numerous times throughout the recommendation that these early engagement opportunities through observation and collaboration will be entirely voluntary and engaged with at the discretion of the vendor, further highlighting that aforementioned delineation in regulatory authority.

More on DOE and DOD nuclear programs: There is a vast and complicated network of DOE and DOD nuclear projects and programs. Below are summaries of some of the most important projects with links to further reading on NewsWire:

• The Reactor Pilot Program—A DOE program that kicked off in 2025 to authorize ten developers to build test reactors with a goal of criticality by July 4.
• The Fuel Line Pilot Program—A parallel DOE fuel fabrication program meant to support the Reactor Pilot Program by authorizing fuel fabrication facilities.
• The Janus Program—The DOD’s newest program, which was established in October 2025 and seeks to deploy a microreactor at a military installation by 2030.
• Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations (ANPI)—A DOD program launched in 2024 to deploy microreactors at military installations.
• Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP)—A DOE program launched in 2020 to support reactor development with cost-shared funding. Under the umbrella of ARDP, there are three subprograms with varying timetables for deployment. The companies involved and the differences between those programs are broken down in this DOE infographic.
• The DOD also has two important individual reactor projects—the Eielson Air Force Base Microreactor Pilot Program and Project Pele.