The Trump administration has secretly rewritten nuclear safety rules

"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"

"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 are publicly available. The orders slash hundreds of pages of requirements for security at the reactors. They also loosen protections for ground water and the environment"

Department of Energy nuclear safety directives were substantially rewritten and distributed privately to regulated companies while the revised orders were not made publicly available. The revisions aim to accelerate development of Small Modular Reactors and remove or reduce hundreds of pages of requirements that governed security, environmental protections, recordkeeping, and safety roles. The new orders loosen groundwater and environmental protections, eliminate at least one key safety role, and raise the radiation exposure threshold that triggers formal accident investigations. Roughly 750 pages were removed, leaving about one third of the original material, amid major private and public investment in new reactor projects.

Read at www.npr.org