My comment submitted re Modernizing Reactor Licensing, Safety Oversight, and Siting Practices...
Note: If anyone wants to reference my comment shown below as part of their own comment to the NRC, my comment's NRC tracking number is:
msl-6mkd-vnai
To submit a comment, this url should get you directly to the page you need to use (press the "comment" button that appears on this gov't page):
https://www.regulations.gov/search?searchTerm=NRC-2025-0975-0001
The comment period ends August 31, 2026 at 11:59 pm EDT.
(The text below was submitted to the NRC; images have been added to this online copy by the author or from the author's personal collection.)
re: Docket ID NRC-2025-0975 (as described in recent NRC hearings and in this pdf:
https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2620/ML26208A059.pdf )
Comment submitted by: Ace Hoffman, Carlsbad, California USA
Executive Order (EO) 14300 is a dramatic and dangerous overreach of Presidential ("Executive") authority, and follows dozens of other EOs issued by the current administration which have had a devastating effect on American citizens, our trading partners, our allies, our environment, and billions of people around the world.
The corrupt Trump Administration (aka "Regime") has used EOs:
* To cancel global aid to foreign countries (including life-saving medicines and food);
* To start wars without Congressional approval (by simply not calling them "wars");
* To hamper citizens' right to vote;
* To expel hard-working and honest immigrants who have no criminal record;
* To personally enrich himself, his family, friends, and hundreds (or even thousands) of associates and "business" partners.
* To reduce health care for millions of Americans;
* etc.
And yet EO 14300 may be the MOST devastating EO of them all, because EO 14300 is intended to relax numerous nuclear safety standards and eliminate others entirely.
EO 14300 asserts that its purpose is: "modernizing reactor licensing, safety oversight, and siting practices" but that just hides what it is really doing: Eliminating safety clauses from numerous parts of 10 CFR (specifically impacting Parts 10, 50, 51, 52 and 54, and perhaps others).
Regarding Early Site Permits (ESPs), NRC-2025-0975, as a proposed response to EO 14300, will "eliminate expiration dates and renewal requirements." An example of why this is a bad idea is that nuclear reactors are extremely risky ventures and thus, invariably are sited away from large cities (even though that's where most of the electricity they produce goes). They also should not be located beneath major airport flight patterns (to reduce the chance of an accidental or intentional airplane strike such as the United Parcel Service flight 2976 crash less than a year ago). Populations change over time, and with no expiration date or renewal requirements, none of these changes would be taken into account.
Regarding extending the Manufacturing License (ML) duration to 40 years, this encourages reactor builders to continue building older reactor designs even if newer designs appear to be safer, more reliable, more efficient, etc.. Proving new reactor designs is extremely difficult and time-consuming due to the nature of radiation, which can enhance normal aging through very complex interactions at the molecular level, depending on fuel type, emission types (alpha, beta, gamma, x-ray, neutron...), energy levels, enrichment levels, and many other factors. There are currently dozens of proposals for completely new reactor designs (mostly for Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs)). Granting 40-years licenses in such a volatile field discourages innovation. In the nuclear industry, even small safety improvements can have enormous payback for society if it can prevent even ONE accident that is severe enough to invoke the use of the Price-Anderson Act.
Delaying the initial license renewal 20 years, and then doubling its time period from 20 years to 40 years is essentially an insane option. Numerous major parts of a nuclear reactor rarely or barely last as long as 20 years, such as Reactor Pressure Vessel Heads, Steam Generators, valves, pumps, backup generators, control cables, steam and water pipes, grates, filters, transformers, cement, electronics, computers... Preparation for getting a license extension is traditionally and invariably a time of repair, replacement, fix, renew, retrain, etc.. Cut out the license renewal and many of these problems revert to the standard: "fix-on-fail" philosophy, which has already been shown to miss problems that come up regularly: For example the Davis-Besse reactor in Ohio had a problem with clogged filters for many months before a worker leaned against a control rod (not a proper procedure but Ohio is very lucky it happened!) and it bent over, because a rust hole the size of a football in the RPVH had gone all the way through to the thin stainless steel liner that covers the inside of the reactor — and the liner was already bulging out!
Whoops there goes Ohio (nearly)!
The NRC on-site inspectors should have recognized a problem needed to be solved because of all those clogged filters. The company should have recognized the problem for sure, since they were buying extra filters and replacing them unusually frequently.
Both checks failed and there was nearly an unstoppable meltdown at Davis-Besse, but the incident shows the value of having competent inspectors (and concerned company employees). Ideally, the system works because the presence of inspectors not only helps find problems, but also: Their mere presence (and DILIGENCE) causes company employees to be more diligent too. At least, that's how it's supposed to work.
Another example of the importance of independent inspectors (and by extension, license renewals) is the formation of the NRC in 1974, which happened because the original Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was found to be biased and company-serving instead of serving the public. Safety was being compromised. The AEC was pushing, funding, and supporting nuclear power's development, and at the same time was responsible for regulating safety for the same industry.
It was realized that "safety" was falling behind because the AEC was making sure the vast public, private, and government investment in the nuclear industry was showing a profit.
This author was born in 1956, and thus when the NRC was formed, was a high school senior — who actually believed that the formation of the NRC would mean the end of the nuclear industry. My thinking at the time was simply that if the NRC's purpose was solely to consider safety, it would not allow a single civilian nuclear reactor anywhere. I thought then (and think now) that reactors are too risky, and the potential consequences of an accident are far too devastating.
At that time, drone warfare, terrorism, sabotage, disgruntled workers, accidental airplane strikes (let alone 9-11 type events), etc. were distant considerations compared to simply worrying about "Normal Accidents" of the kind described in a famous book with that title, written by Charles Perrow in 1984.
But as time has shown, the NRC, regardless of its original purpose (to protect the public) has to a large extent cowered before the powerful nuclear industry — not completely (not yet, that is) — but Three Mile Island's (TMI's) accident five years after the NRC was created showed that the problem had not been solved by then, and Davis-Besse's near-catastrophic 2002 "hole in the head" incident (mentioned above), and dozens of other VERY CLOSE CALLS, have proven the real problem — that a tragic American meltdown is inevitable sooner or later — has NEVER been solved. Nor can it be, nor need it be, because there are safe alternatives that CANNOT have a huge accident and DO NOT require their own Price-Anderson Act to protect their industry from catastrophic damage expenses.
And after so many decades, WHY is there even a Price-Anderson Act at all?
Hasn't the industry learned how NOT to have a catastrophic accident? Is the industry unable to purchase insurance on the open market? Yes, of course it is impossible, for two reasons:
First, no insurance company wants to have anything to do with nuclear power precisely because it is too risky. (Go check your home-owner's policy and see that anything nuclear is specifically excluded.)
Second, to insure a nuclear reactor, the insurance company would need to believe that the reactor was safe and worth the risk. It would need to inspect it, and know what it was inspecting, and inspect it again regularly, and look at its books to be sure events are being recorded properly... and the NRC is already supposed to do all that.
Five years after it was formed, TMI proved the NRC wasn't doing enough, causing the nuclear industry itself to worry about the impact of a catastrophic accident on public acceptance of the risk, and to create their own additional voluntary nuclear safety institute, the secretive Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO).
Additional incidents since TMI prove that the addition of INPO has not been enough. The industry has merely been lucky since TMI. Lucky at Davis-Besse. Lucky at Vermont Yankee. Lucky at Monticello. Lucky at San Onofre. Lucky it was Fukushima across the ocean in Japan, rather than any of the nearly two dozen identical faulty GE BWR reactors still operating in America.
Regarding planned changes to 10 CFR Part 52, what is described by the NRC as "flexibility for a developer" fails to protect the public because the use of "standardized programs" will fail to account for ANY additional information gained in the field after the "standardized program" has been approved. Even the simplest reactor design is anything but simple, and its commercial lifespan will be extremely difficult to ascertain. It cannot be ascertained from the cost of production, nor from any known "perfect" AI calculation or simulation. Only time will tell, as it does in every industry on earth. Tesla expected self-driving cars by now (and a self-sustaining colony on Mars within 10 years). Indeed, the American public was promised reactors would be safe, but meltdowns happened at SL-1, Fermi 1, Santa Susanna, TMI and we have come close countless other times. We won't be fooled again!
Yet the proposed regulations would allow an AI-generated design of a reactor, that the NRC has approved because it "looks good on paper" (that's a euphemism for looking at an AI-generated screen image), to be subsequently used by other manufacturers, in other locations, without further evaluation.
Indeed, the whole idea of a COL (Combined [manufacturing] and Operating License) is absurd for anything as complex and risky as to need Price-Anderson before anyone would throw money at the venture. Not all new reactor designs can be brought up to full power in small steps — precisely because they are so small. So either they will work at full or nearly-full power... or they will not, and if not, then Price-Anderson might save the company, and the industry, but it won't help the occupants of the city and state where the failure occurs. It won't help those downwind or downstream.
("The Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act was enacted into law on September 2, 1957, by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. It was added as Section 170 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 to facilitate the commercial development of nuclear energy by limiting the liability of nonmilitary nuclear facilities." — A current AI-generated answer (from a Brave browser).)
Regarding planned changes to 10 CFR Part 54, allowing nuclear reactor operators to propose "alternative risk-informed and performance-based criteria" to "manage" aging reactors is an alternative, presumably, to having permanent on-site inspectors from the NRC and as such, it cannot possibly IMPROVE safety, and its purpose can only be to lower costs. Does risk to life and limb or risk to corporate profits matter more? What is the proper balance for a "risk-informed" decision (see discussion of NRC's mission statement, below)? Of course, no nuclear reactor has EVER been operated for 80 years, let alone 120 or 160, and no sane person would EVER allow ANY reactor to operate that long. The ONLY possible reason to operate one for that length of time is because it seems profitable... until it breaks. And even then, there's Price-Anderson to cover the corporate costs. But what about the human costs?
If Price-Anderson MUST exist for SOME reactors, there should at least be a sunsetting of P-A support: The original 20 years should have been more than sufficient, and then only for the first few reactors. But nobody would build a reactor without it, and that doesn't make nuclear reactors safe. Nothing can make nuclear reactors safe. The NRC could have figured that out in 1974 — before Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and they still can figure that out, before whatever happens next if they don't.
Regarding planned changes to 10 CFR Part 50, 52, and 53, the "flexibility" for Emergency Planning Zones (EPZs) assumes there is such a thing as a "low-risk facility." That's like saying a cyanide factory might be a "low-risk facility." By what criteria is that even possible? And regarding Emergency Preparedness (EP) generally, so-called "streamlining" the process is impossible: No two localities are the same, their wind and water patterns and needs, their population densities, the nearness to the reactor site of hospitals, schools, nurseries, farms, airports... all these things (and many more) are different at each site.
Regarding planned changes to 10 CFR Parts: 50.75, 53.1010, 53.1020, 53.1040, 53.1050, decommissioning costs are right now being stolen for foolhardy attempts to restart old reactors, and are grossly inadequate anyway unless the government promises both insurance for accidents (Price-Anderson) AND to take the toxic nuclear waste after use — or pay the waste manufacturer to store the waste on-site, possibly forever as far as we can tell so far.
Therefore, the LOCAL residents (and the whole world) are put at risk long after the reactor stops operating and income for decommissioning stops coming in. There is no plan which does not result in the public absorbing the cost of indefinite storage, OR the cost of accidents, including the costs of cancer, leukemia, stroke, heart attack, childhood deformities, premature death... and lost property values.
No reactor can be financially worth operating, starting from Day One.
Additional comments are not necessarily specific to any particular 10 CFR Part, but may relate to multiple Parts:
As long as there is no solution to the nuclear waste problem (which could be forever), what calculations are being used to determine the overall safety of any nuclear endeavor from start to finish — in other words, including mining, milling, refining, enriching, transporting, using, removing, wet storage, dry storage, transport, more dry storage, perhaps more transport and more dry storage... with a factor for risk per year multiplied by a reasonable expectation for the "worst case" scenario of UNLIMITED nuclear waste storage times, and also a calculated risk factor for a spent fuel dispersal accident at some time MUCH later in the future, perhaps a thousand years from now, or ten thousand, when the fuel will have far fewer fission products but about the same amount of plutonium-239 and uranium-235? Calculations should also be made for the risk of the fissionable isotopes being extracted from the fuel, turned into thermonuclear (Pu) or atomic (U) bombs, and then exploded on another spent fuel storage installation in the middle of a large "nuclear campus."
With more than two thousand Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs) expected (2,102 was the number estimated by the NRC recently) transportation accidents are essentially inevitable. How will it be possible to transport used SMRs intact without risking overloading old, decrepit bridges, even if those bridges successfully take normal traffic? Since these SMRs might be placed anywhere in the country, it is extremely likely that they will use bridges and tunnels and narrow roads that large heavy loads do not normally travel on. This should be recognized as a special problem because maximum SMR sizes are determined in part by the "legal" weight limits on America's highways, not the ACTUAL load limits. It's one thing to assume a potato truck or dump truck can pass over an old bridge. However, a large quantity of highly toxic nuclear waste requires a much more careful analysis of the strength of every bridge and tunnel, every steep mountain pass, and every population center, every risky intersection, every rail crossing... not to mention the skills of every operator (they must have no "loco-motive" and be licensed to operate nuclear transport vehicles, not just any shipping container or even any normal (non-radioactive) large and heavy load). The "normal" risks are multiplied by the potential damage that could affect every generation of life (human and other) for eternity. Now, THAT is a very heavy load!
Every analysis of the "risks" MUST be compared to the benefits, and THEREFORE it is imperative that the nuclear reactor risk/benefit calculations be compared to similar calculations for alternative energy sources, such as wind and solar with clean energy backup and a widespread (global) interconnected electrical energy grid such as that proposed nearly 100 years ago by R. Buckminster Fuller.
The risk comparisons must include the consequences of severe accidents in both cases, of course. Rare events must NOT be excluded, and in fact it is impossible to know the "odds" of such events as terrorism, asteroid impacts, war, accidental airplane strikes, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic activity, and even abandonment due to plague or some other reason. So-called "walk-away safe" reactors would have to be tested under the most extreme conditions!
The reality is that meltdowns MUST be assumed; and the potential damage to the area where the reactor will be operating and/or stored after use must be individually examined for the possible consequences of ANY severe accident.
Plutonium-239, with a half-life of 24,100 years, is a relatively easy element to extract from spent nuclear fuel to make a nuclear bomb with: A number of countries have done it, and America was terrified that Germany or Japan would do it while we were doing it during WWII, so it really can't be all that difficult for any "advanced" civilization. Therefore, it must be ASSUMED that any plutonium-239 in spent fuel COULD eventually end up being used in a thermonuclear bomb. We can pray it won't happen, but better yet we can ensure it won't happen by NOT MAKING THE PLUTONIUM IN THE FIRST PLACE. Or at least, we can stop making more.
Allowing nuclear reactors to run for 80 years or even 120 years, let alone 160 or more... is madness: Why do it? If a reactor can't pay for itself in 20 years, maybe it's NOT cost effective? If it can, does that include the cost of severe accidents? NO! Not unless America gets rid of Price-Anderson for ANY extension of the original license. Otherwise ALL the additional risks of an aging plant are forced onto the public at large. Will the nuclear industry EVER take full responsibility for the potential accidents it can create?
With 2,102 SMRs in operation for up to 120 years or more each (according to potential relicensing within the new regulatory framework) that would be more than a quarter of a million years of operation. The record of nuclear power has never been anywhere near good enough, in terms of meltdowns per total years of operation across the industry, to sustain that kind of penetration without incidents. It is therefore reasonable to ASSUME there will be severe accidents with SMRs, including a complete dispersal of the contents somewhere, for some reason, at some point in the future. Therefore the standard "reference accident" model and corresponding EPZ, etc. should be based on the health effects, financial burdens, and restricted land-use (etc.) that can be created by such an accident. With so many reactors in so many places, so-called "extremely rare" events WILL HAPPEN.
Be definition, SMRs will have much smaller, lighter, thinner reactor pressure vessels (RPVs). Therefore radiation damage to the vessels themselves may be MORE intense and MORE extensive (proportionately) than to an 8" thick current RPV. How many "coupons" will be required for SMRs? Will EVERY SMR be required to have coupons? How will the coupons be extracted? How frequently? Who will examine them to determine if any embrittlement issues have appeared? ("Coupons" here is referring to small sample nuggets which are manufactured along with the RPV, at the same time and of the same alloy as the RPV, and placed in the "hottest" (both radioactively and thermally) areas of the RPV, to be examined periodically over the planned life of the reactor, in place of destructive testing of the RPV itself.)
Should a new SMR design be certified as a design that can be replicated without "undue regulatory burden" before at least one version of the new design has been destructively tested so that the accuracy of its own coupons can be determined BEFORE large-scale manufacturing of that design occurs without "regulatory burden"?
How often will SMRs be inspected on-site? How will they be properly guarded against terrorism, sabotage, war, etc.? Will remote-controlled or automated (AI-controlled) lethal defensive weapons be used? If not, will a guard be on duty 24/7 (even if the control room operations have been handed over to AI)?
How will the local emergency responders be trained to handle the unexpectedly rare event that turns out happening anyway, somewhere, because there will be so many chances (2,102 or more)?
How will it be possible to safely move a used SMR?
Lastly, I wish to comment on the NRC Mission Statement as shown on slide 6 of
https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2620/ML26208A059.pdf which reads as follows:
"The NRC protects the public health and safety and advances the nation's common defense and security by enabling the safe and secure use and deployment of civilian nuclear energy technologies and radioactive materials through efficient and reliable licensing, oversight, and regulation for the benefit of society and the environment."
It should first be noted that there has been a lot of "mission creep" in the 52 year history of the NRC.
The current mission statement does NOT emphasize public safety as the highest priority — rather, "enabling" the nuclear industry is the NRC's main mission. Furthermore, the claim within the mission statement that the nation's "common defense and security" can in any way be improved by the "use and deployment of civilian nuclear energy" is as preposterous a statement as can be made in a world of turmoil, drones, awkwardly-started wars with no clear conclusion, advanced weapons beyond any ability to defend against them, and actions by the current President which violate international law for open trade and seas, and even war crimes including bombing civilian infrastructure such as children's schools, and desalination plants in a desert... these sorts of actions, aside from being horrible to contemplate having been done in America's name, only portend of future retaliations if history has taught the world anything — and that retaliation will be at any future date, time, and place. Nuclear reactors are already considered hostages throughout the world: In Ukraine, six have been captured by Russian forces, and the Chernobyl containment has been breached by missiles and continues to spew deadly radiation. Other reactors around the world are being threatened on a daily basis.
Furthermore, the purpose of civilian nuclear reactors is ONLY to produce electricity: Their ONLY connection to "security" is to be a primary target of terrorists or opposing forces, or even to be potentially accidental targets of mistakenly aimed (or damaged-in-flight) missiles that were meant for the cities nearby.
Furthermore, even ONE EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse) from ONE nuclear warhead exploded high above the atmosphere over the central portion of the United States could cause a COMPLETE BLACKOUT throughout the country, causing ALL electrical transmission systems to fail simultaneously, INCLUDING nuclear power plant control rooms and ALL backup systems, resulting in nearly a hundred simultaneous meltdowns and shortly thereafter, accompanying spent fuel pool fires as the pool's water boils away. Military reactors may or may not be similarly damaged: Full testing of supposedly "hardened" facilities is impossible.
Furthermore, plans to operate SMRs with operator-less remote AI-control introduces enormous security problems including external breaches by other AIs and internal rogue systems. Pushing AI control into current reactor control rooms adds the danger of human operators losing their own skills as they rely on and trust the AI more and more over time, until the moment that trust becomes poorly placed.
These vulnerabilities will NEVER go away, they will only get worse, especially if there are thousands of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (NRC 's current estimate is 2,102) spreading throughout the country, crisscrossing the fifty states (53 states if Puerto Rico becomes a state (as it should), and Canada and Greenland are annexed (as the current occupant of the White House has repeatedly asserted is his desire).
Finally: Nuclear energy is the most costly, most environmentally-unfriendly, slowest-to-achieve energy solution available among the non-fossil fuel choices, due to its cost-of-failure (requiring public insurance in the form of Price-Anderson), its likelihood of failure (far from zero), its unreliability (unexpected failures often result in months or years of downtime), and then the nuclear waste is left for someone to find... for hundreds of thousands of years (plutonium-239).
Civilian nuclear power is utterly unsustainable, ESPECIALLY in a world with nuclear weapons.
Ace Hoffman, Carlsbad, California USA
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Contact information for the author of this newsletter:
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, California USA
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
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Blog:
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Email: ace [at]
acehoffman.org
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