Cooling towers of the installation of the nuclear reactor of the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Production factory in Georgia. The nuclear regulatory committee is an independent agency responsible for supervising security to the country’s reactors.
Mike Stewart / AP
hide
tilting legend
Mike Stewart / AP
President Trump dismissed one of the five independent committee members who oversee the country’s nuclear reactors.
The nuclear regulation commissioner, Christopher T. Hanson, was dismissed on Friday, according to a brief e-mail seen by NPR of Trent Morse, deputy director of the White House presidential. E-mail only said that “Hanson’s position as a commissioner of the United States nuclear regulatory committee was interrupted immediately”.
“All organizations are more effective when the leaders brought back in the same direction,” said the assistant press secretary of the White House, Anna Kelly, at NPR by e-mail. “President Trump reserves the right to withdraw employees within his own executive power who exercises his executive authority.”
The nuclear regulatory committee said it could do its work without Hanson. “The CNRC has worked in the past with less than five commissioners and will continue to do so,” the agency said in a statement.
In a statement shared with NPR, Hanson said that he had been dismissed “without reason” and that he had devoted his mandate to “preserve the independence, integrity and bipartite nature of the global nuclear security institution.
Hanson was appointed to the CNRC by President Joseph Biden in 2020, then renamed in 2024. His current mandate was to expire in 2029, according to a biography on the CNRC website which has since been deleted.
Some nuclear industry observers have strongly criticized the decision. “I think that coupled with other administration attacks on the independence of the nuclear regulatory committee could have serious implications for nuclear security,” said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear security at the Union of Scientists concerned, an environmental surveillance group. “It is essential that the CNRC carries its judgments on the protection of health and security without regard to the financial health of the nuclear industry.”
The CNRC was created by Congress in 1974 to strictly regulate nuclear reactors and protect Americans from exposure to radiation. By design, it was supervised by a set of presidency commissioners and approved by the Senate, who are appointed to five years of sentences. The White House has generally been abstained to interfere with the agency, which is recognized for having maintained a solid security file in American nuclear reactors since a partial collapse at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in 1979.
Last month, President Trump signed an executive decree forcing radical reforms to the CNRC. The ordinance called for a “wholesale revision” of the agency’s security regulations in coordination with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs of the White House and the Ministry of Effectiveness of the Government. He also calls for strength reductions to the agency and to reconsider certain radiotherapy standards.
Order was one of the four signed by the President to promote the American nuclear industry. Trump signed the orders flanked by smiling industry leaders, one of which had a design of reactors previously rejected by the CNRC, because the agency said it had not provided information on possible accident scenarios.
