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 governed by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Both are required by law and the public — which includes individuals, community groups, environmental organizations, and indigenous nations — gets to comment on both. Those comments create the legal record necessary to challenge agency decisions in court. Without them there is no basis for a legal challenge. For an example of how the same pattern of secrecy is playing out in the environmental review process, see my recent article on the Paducah Laser Enrichment Facility.

NRC comment periods are typically 30 days or less — barely enough time for most people to learn a rule exists, let alone analyze it. But you do not have to be an expert to submit a comment. You can reference the technical arguments of others in your submission, which incorporates those arguments into the administrative record under your name and strengthens the legal foundation for any future court challenge. You can also copy and paste any part of this article, including the bullet lists below, directly into your comment.

By searching the NRC docket online I found detailed, fully cited technical comments submitted by Fred Schofer, a former NRC Regulatory Analysis Team Lead and Rulemaking Project Manager who spent 16 years at the agency before retiring in April 2024. His analysis is the most rigorous I have encountered in years of covering nuclear regulatory policy. He submitted detailed comments on the April 2 rule and followed with a 19-point formal comment on the ISG on April 19. At the time of publishing his ISG comment had not yet posted — search his name at the ISG docket and it will come up. Here are the highlights of both.

April 2 Rule — Docket NRC-2025-1503

+DOE and DOW are not regulatory agencies. The NRC was created in 1974 specifically to separate nuclear promotion from nuclear regulation because the Atomic Energy Commission had tried to do both and the conflict of interest proved irreconcilable. Neither DOE nor DOW has safety standards equivalent to the NRC’s independent framework.

+No objective acceptance criteria. Companies self-certify that a prior secret authorization satisfies NRC safety requirements with no defined standard for when it does.

+The safety basis cannot be scaled. The NRC’s own regulations define a prototype plant as one similar to a commercial design “in all features and size.” A nuclear reactor tested at small scale under a secret DOE authorization fails that definition for any commercial application and the April 2 rule never acknowledges this conflict. As Fred writes: “every application that references a materially differently-sized prior authorization contains an unresolved regulatory deficiency that an intervenor can contest at the licensing stage, and a petitioner can challenge directly in the courts of appeals within 60 days of final rule publication.”

+Multiple nuclear reactors on one site not addressed. The rule contains no requirement to analyze how multiple nuclear reactors interact through shared infrastructure and combined accident consequences — yet industry lawyers are already advising clients to seek approval for 10 to 20 units on one campus using a single prototype authorization.

+Classified military material could form the safety basis for a commercial license the public cannot examine or challenge in a hearing.

+The regulatory analysis is empty. The NRC admitted it could not quantify costs or benefits, violating its own guidelines.

April 17 ISG — Docket NRC-2026-0760

+All ten appendices instruct NRC staff to defer to DOE or DOW authorization “to the maximum extent practical” with no evidentiary threshold and no methodology for determining when secret information is sufficient.

+Part 53 — the new advanced nuclear reactor licensing framework that took effect April 29, 2026 and is the most likely licensing pathway for the companies this rule was designed for — is completely omitted from the guidance.

+No framework for AI-generated license applications. In March 2026 DOE demonstrated using artificial intelligence to convert a DOE safety document into a 208-page NRC license application in 24 hours. Neither the rule nor the ISG requires disclosure of AI use or any quality assurance for AI-generated content.

+Several pilot program nuclear reactors use high-assay low-enriched uranium TRISO fuel (HALEU TRISO) enriched up to 20% — four times higher than standard commercial nuclear reactor fuel. Fuel qualification data from a prototype-scale nuclear reactor does not automatically transfer to a larger commercial design and the ISG provides no guidance on this.

+One appendix contains a blank section where a required legal analysis should appear with a placeholder reading “discussion to be provided in final ISG.”

Fred’s conclusion: the ISG is “unfit for finalization.”

What To Submit — Copy, Paste, Done

Comments can be submitted online at regulations.gov. You can copy and paste any part of this article — including the bullet lists above — directly into your comment. The sample comments below reference Fred’s docket submissions, which formally incorporates his technical arguments into the administrative record under your name. You can add your own words or submit as written.

For the April 2 rule — deadline May 4, 2026

Submit online at: https://www.regulations.gov/docket/NRC-2025-1503

I oppose the proposed rule “NRC Reviews of Reactor Designs Previously Authorized by U.S. Department of Energy or Department of War,” Docket ID NRC-2025-1503. Independent NRC safety review is a non-delegable mandate under the Atomic Energy Act and cannot lawfully be replaced by secret DOE or DOW internal authorizations that the public cannot access or challenge. I incorporate by reference and adopt as my own the comments submitted to this docket by Fred Schofer, former NRC Regulatory Analysis Team Lead, which identify specific legal deficiencies including the absence of objective acceptance criteria, the unresolved conflict with the NRC’s own prototype definition, the failure to address prototype-to-commercial scaling, and the inadequate regulatory analysis. I request that this proposed rule be withdrawn.

For the April 17 ISG — deadline May 18, 2026

Submit online at: https://www.regulations.gov/docket/NRC-2026-0760

I oppose Interim Staff Guidance DANU-ISG-2026-XX, Docket ID NRC-2026-0760. Independent NRC safety review cannot be reduced to blanket deference to secret DOE or DOW authorizations. I incorporate by reference and adopt as my own the comments submitted to this docket by Fred Schofer, former NRC Regulatory Analysis Team Lead, which identify 19 formal deficiencies including the omission of Part 53, the absence of multi-unit risk assessment requirements, and the lack of any framework for AI-generated license application content. I request that this guidance be withdrawn and reissued after proper public notice-and-comment.

To read Fred Schofer’s comments in full: his April 2 comment is here. His ISG comment will be posted to the second docket shortly — search his name when you get there.

If you are already submitting comments, the Paducah Laser Enrichment Facility draft Environmental Impact Statement also has a public comment deadline of May 11, 2026. I have written about that proceeding and submitted my own comments. You can submit yours at https://www.regulations.gov/docket/NRC-2025-1007.

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