CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

A Guide to Commenting on Rules Removing Public Oversight of Nuclear Reactor Safety

Public comments on two new NRC rules are due soon — May 4 and May 18, 2026. This is a quick guide on what these rules do and how to submit comments that carry legal weight, even if you have never done it before.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is undergoing a radical restructuring that is happening so fast it’s hard for the public to keep up — but public participation has never been more important. Two rules published in April 2026 would permanently remove the public from the safety review process for new commercial nuclear reactors.

On April 2 the NRC published a proposed rule that would allow companies seeking commercial nuclear reactor licenses to substitute a secret Department of Energy (DOE) or Department of War (DOW) internal safety authorization for the NRC’s own independent safety review. Those DOE safety reviews are not just secret — they have been secretly rewritten.

Here is what that means in practice. A startup company with no commercial nuclear track record tests a small experimental nuclear reactor under a secret DOE safety review that the public never sees. It then walks into the NRC and uses that secret authorization to satisfy the commercial nuclear reactor safety requirement. Because the public had no access to the underlying safety study, it has no basis to challenge the license in court.

Valar Atomics is one such startup. Founded in 2023 and backed by defense AI giant Palantir, it was one of eleven companies selected by the DOE to race toward nuclear reactor criticality by July 4 under a program that bypasses NRC licensing entirely. Its nuclear reactor — a 100 kilowatt device the size of a shipping container — will be tested under a secret DOE safety review with no independent observer and no public verification of whether the test succeeds or fails. The July 4 deadline is a White House political target, not a safety milestone. Valar has already stated publicly what the April 2 rule means for its plans to expand from a test nuclear reactor to full commercial scale deployment: “We cannot achieve this necessary scale if every subsequent commercial application is forced to re-litigate foundational safety demonstrations that have already been validated by the Department of Energy or the Department of War.” Industry lawyers are already advising clients to use this kind of pilot nuclear reactor data to seek NRC approval for “10 to 20 units on a commercial AI campus.” The NRC would be directed to accept a secret safety review conducted on a nuclear reactor the size of a shipping container as the foundation for licensing nuclear reactors potentially 100 times larger, operating for 40 to 80 years, next to civilian communities.

On April 17 the NRC published companion Interim Staff Guidance (ISG) — a procedural document telling NRC staff how to implement the April 2 rule — which amounts to instructions to defer to the DOE and DOW with no independent judgment required. This is consistent with what recent investigations by ProPublica and E&E News have found: that the NRC no longer functions as an independent regulatory agency, with its draft rules now subject to White House review and the DOE directing major agency decisions. Over 400 NRC staff have departed since Trump took office. Under executive orders with a hard November 2026 deadline, the agency is being systematically redirected to serve the administration’s nuclear energy agenda.

Why Your Comment Matters — and How It Works

The NRC nuclear reactor licensing process normally has two separate parts — a safety review and an environmental review........

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