Good or worrying news? Advanced reactors exempt from long-term environmental tests.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has issued a historic decision to introduce a “categorical exclusion” for advanced nuclear reactors from the standard procedures of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). This decision means that the processes of site approval, construction, operation, and decommissioning for modern nuclear technology will no longer require years-long preparation of environmental studies (EA and EIS)

According to the publication in the Federal Register, the Department has determined that advanced reactors by their nature do not significantly affect the quality of the environment, and that administrative barriers that apply to older technologies have become superfluous. The exclusion applies to microreactors and small modular reactors (SMRs) as well as Generation IV reactors and advanced Generation III+ models.

The Department of Energy bases its decision on decades of research that have confirmed that modern designs include passive safety mechanisms (systems that automatically shut down the reactor without external intervention); a reduced number and quantity of fission products (smaller amounts of fuel and materials reduce the risk of incidents off the site); as well as better performance and an architecture that minimizes the ecological footprint.

Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, signed the document on January 28, emphasizing that the impacts of constructing these facilities are now analogous to those of building ordinary, non-nuclear industrial facilities.

But although bureaucracy has been reduced, the DOE retains the right to review every single project. If it is determined that there are “extraordinary circumstances” or that the plan for managing nuclear waste is not in line with standards, the project will still have to undergo rigorous reviews.

Public discussion of these changes was open until early March, and the decision is considered a key step in implementing the Executive Orders of 2025 aimed at rapidly decarbonizing the American grid.

We, however, warn that this is a trend that is dangerous in a certain sense. Yes, it is true that advanced designs of nuclear reactors are inherently safer, but we remind that regulatory frameworks exist anyway because of those “unlikely” situations.

And that is why we remind that this is a dangerous trend: with the coming of Donald Trump to the office of the President of the United States, there began a systematic dismantling of the regulatory framework and regulatory institutions, not only as concerns the nuclear industry. The reason is clearly: the administration's interest is to accelerate the construction of nuclear plants and their cheapening – and bureaucratic obstacles are (rightly or wrongly) perceived as the primary obstacle to nuclear projects. We generally do not fully agree with this and we had once translated a short text whose assessments we agree with and which deals precisely with this issue.