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national environmental policy act
'Making America Unsafe Again': Alarm Over Environmental Review Exemption for Nuclear Reactors
"I think the DOE's attempts to cut corners on safety, security, and environmental protections are posing a grave risk to public health, safety, and our natural environment," said one expert.
Feb 03, 2026
Less than a week after NPR revealed that "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," the US Department of Energy announced Monday that it is allowing firms building experimental nuclear reactors to seek exemptions from legally required environmental reviews.
Citing executive orders signed by President Donald Trump in May, a notice published in the Federal Register states that the DOE "is establishing a categorical exclusion for authorization, siting, construction, operation, reauthorization, and decommissioning of advanced nuclear reactors for inclusion in its National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) implementing procedures."
NEPA has long been a target of energy industries and Republican elected officials, including Trump. The exemption policy has been expected since Trump's May orders—which also launched a DOE pilot program to rapidly build the experimental reactors—and the department said in a statement that even the exempted reactors will face some reviews.
"The US Department of Energy is establishing the potential option to obtain a streamlined approach for advanced nuclear reactors as part of the environmental review performed under NEPA," the DOE said. "The analysis on each reactor being considered will be informed by previously completed environmental reviews for similar advanced nuclear technologies."
"The fact is that any nuclear reactor, no matter how small, no matter how safe it looks on paper, is potentially subject to severe accidents."
However, the DOE announcement alarmed various experts, including Daniel P. Aldrich, director of the Resilience Studies Program at Northeastern University, who wrote on social media: "Making America unsafe again: Trump created an exclusion for new experimental reactors from disclosing how their construction and operation might harm the environment, and from a written, public assessment of the possible consequences of a nuclear accident."
Foreign policy reporter Laura Rozen described the policy as "terrifying," while Paul Dorfman, chair of the Nuclear Consulting Group and a scholar at the University of Sussex's Bennett Institute for Innovation and Policy Acceleration, called it "truly crazy."
As NPR reported Monday:
Until now, the test reactor designs currently under construction have primarily existed on paper, according to Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group. He believes the lack of real-world experience with the reactors means that they should be subject to more rigorous safety and environmental reviews before they're built.
"The fact is that any nuclear reactor, no matter how small, no matter how safe it looks on paper, is potentially subject to severe accidents," Lyman said.
"I think the DOE's attempts to cut corners on safety, security, and environmental protections are posing a grave risk to public health, safety, and our natural environment here in the United States," he added.
Lyman was also among the experts who criticized changes that NPR exposed last week, after senior editor and correspondent Geoff Brumfiel obtained documents detailing updates to "departmental orders, which dictate requirements for almost every aspect of the reactors' operations—including safety systems, environmental protections, site security, and accident investigations."
While the DOE said that it shared early versions of the rules with companies, "the reduction of unnecessary regulations will increase innovation in the industry without jeopardizing safety," and "the department anticipates publicly posting the directives later this year," Brumfiel noted that the orders he saw weren't labeled as drafts and had the word "approved" on their cover pages.
In a lengthy statement about last week's reporting, Lyman said on the Union of Concerned Scientists website that "this deeply troubling development confirms my worst fears about the dire state of nuclear power safety and security oversight under the Trump administration. Such a brazen rewriting of hundreds of crucial safeguards for the public underscores why preservation of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) as an independent, transparent nuclear regulator is so critical."
"The Energy Department has not only taken a sledgehammer to the basic principles that underlie effective nuclear regulation, but it has also done so in the shadows, keeping the public in the dark," he continued. "These long-standing principles were developed over the course of many decades and consider lessons learned from painful events such as the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters. This is a massive experiment in the deregulation of novel, untested nuclear facilities that could pose grave threats to public health and safety."
"These drastic changes may extend beyond the Reactor Pilot Program, which was created by President Trump last year to circumvent the more rigorous licensing rules employed by the NRC," Lyman warned. "While the DOE created a legally dubious framework to designate these reactors as 'test' reactors to bypass the NRC's statutory authority, these dramatic alterations may further weaken standards used in the broader DOE authorization process and propagate across the entire fleet of commercial nuclear facilities, severely degrading nuclear safety throughout the United States."
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Whatever Industry Wants: How the FCC Is Steamrolling Locals in the Cell Tower Rollout
Two new FCC proposals would render an already weak NEPA process largely meaningless, strip local and state governments of nearly all of their congressionally granted authority, and leave the agency even less accountable to the public.
Jan 02, 2026
The Federal Communications Commission is poised to release two orders that would steamroll states and communities on behalf of the wireless industry. Long in bed with that industry, it will soon eliminate virtually any say locals have in the rollout of new infrastructure. Reflecting the industry’s wish list, these rules would override already-limited state and local control over how and where cell tower infrastructure is built, further erode environmental review safeguards, and trample on states’ rights.
Federal law already restricts states and communities from taking actions that “prohibit or effectively prohibit” the provision of wireless service. Yet Congress also recognized that local governments serve an essential role in responsible siting of telecommunications deployment through land-use planning, zoning, engineering oversight, public safety, and preservation of neighborhood character.
Historically, states and localities have retained the authority to charge industry reasonable fees and to regulate for public welfare—setting standards for structural safety, wildfire risk, flood exposure, resiliency, decommissioning, environmental protection, and aesthetics. Before siting, city councils, boards of supervisors, and other officials evaluate the impacts of large, industrial towers on homes and critical community assets, like parks, slope stability, or historic buildings.
For years, however, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has steadily chipped away at these core local functions through litigation and rulemakings that sharply curtail community authority to impose requirements on carriers. In November, the FCC proposed an even more aggressive series of changes that would all but obliterate what remains of local authority over wireless siting. The FCC claims these measures are necessary to “free towers and other wireless infrastructure from unlawful regulatory burdens imposed at the state and local level.”
As wireless technologies proliferate—with presumably even less scrutiny, oversight, and public input—the environmental and community impacts will only multiply.
One proposal would mandate automatic approval of tower and small-cell applications if localities miss federal deadlines. California officials warn these “unrealistic timelines” risk incomplete safety review and “threaten to silence the very people who must live with the consequences.”
The FCC would broadly preempt local aesthetic standards and cap fees that fund environmental review, rights-of-way management, and safety inspections, shifting industry costs on to taxpayers. It would treat setbacks aimed at limiting noise and visual impacts as impermissible RF radiation regulation, bar local requirements for industry-funded RF testing to verify compliance, prohibit updated safety and design standards at permit renewal, and override requirements that carriers consider less intrusive alternatives or demonstrate actual service need.
Taken together, these measures would eviscerate any local role in siting decisions that consider neighborhoods, landscapes, safety, and environmental integrity in communities across the nation, and replace it with the will of the wireless industry.
At the same time, the FCC is finalizing another rule that would eliminate community input in the agency’s already weak environmental review process. Under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), federal agencies must assess and disclose environmental impacts and consider public concerns, yet the FCC has one of the least rigorous NEPA frameworks of any agency. Few of its authorized activities undergo any meaningful review. It delegates the preliminary environmental review to industry with no oversight or agency record; industry also prepares the few environmental assessments that may be required from the preliminary review. Its notice and comment procedures seem designed to exclude the public, and, unlike most agencies, the FCC has no web page devoted to NEPA documents or compliance. It has almost never enforced its environmental rules against industry violators.
The consequences of these failures are visible nationwide: protected landscapes and historic viewsheds marred, wetlands filled, endangered species habitat destroyed, sacred sites desecrated, burial mounds disturbed, and fragile underwater environments degraded. Equally important, the voices of communities and citizens have been suppressed and ignored.
Now, echoing industry demands to cut “regulatory red tape,” the FCC is proposing to further weaken its skeletal NEPA rules, exempt more of its actions from environmental review, and further exclude the public. It would redefine which actions trigger environmental review so that even fewer authorizations—covering most cell towers and satellite deployments—would be assessed for environmental effects. It would narrow the scope of the few environmental documents that remain and make them less available to the public. Most egregiously, the FCC proposes eliminating its lone public notice provision that alerts communities when a new tower is proposed, thereby allowing residents to object. Although the FCC routinely dismisses objections, the provision complies with a key NEPA requirement.
Both of the FCC’s proposals are a draconian solution to a nonexistent “problem.” At the end of 2024, industry statistics show 651,000 cell towers and wireless facilities operating nationwide, with thousands more, including satellites, approved or underway. Every major wireless carrier has nationwide coverage. Industry has prepared few environmental assessments over the years, and the FCC has never produced a more thorough environmental impact statement. Contrary to industry claims, red tape has not hindered deployment.
As wireless technologies proliferate—with presumably even less scrutiny, oversight, and public input—the environmental and community impacts will only multiply. Taken together, the FCC’s twin proposals would render an already weak NEPA process largely meaningless, strip local and state governments of nearly all of their congressionally granted authority, and leave the agency even less accountable to the public.
With almost 30 bills introduced on accelerating broadband siting this session, Congress too is doing its part to “free” industry from local control and environmental laws. Any and all of these radical new frameworks will hand industry a carte blanche to deploy infrastructure that runs roughshod over local, state, and public interests as well as the environment.
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11 House Democrats Help GOP Pass 'Disastrous' Pro-Polluter Permitting Bill
"The SPEED Act protects corporate interests, not the public, and it should be rejected by any senator who claims to stand with the people," said one campaigner.
Dec 18, 2025
Eleven Democrats on Thursday voted with nearly all Republicans in the US House of Representatives to advance a permitting reform bill that climate and frontline organizations warn is a "disastrous" attack on a landmark environmental protection law.
Democratic Reps. Jim Costa (Calif.), Henry Cuellar (Texas), Don Davis (NC), Chris Deluzio (Pa.), Lizzie Fletcher (Texas), Jared Golden (Maine), Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), Adam Gray (Calif.), John Mannion (NY), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.), and Marc Veasey (Texas) voted with all Republicans present expect Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.) to pass the bill.
The Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development (SPEED) Act, spearheaded by Golden and House Committee on Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), would amend the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which "is often called the 'Magna Carta' of federal environmental laws."
In a statement after the vote, Food & Water Watch legal director Tarah Heinzen said that "for decades, NEPA has ensured logical decision-making and community involvement when the federal government considers projects that could harm people and the environment. The SPEED Act would eviscerate NEPA's protections."
The group detailed key ways in which the SPEED Act attacks NEPA:
- Drastically limiting NEPA's scope of review: Removes many actions from NEPA review altogether, potentially allowing factory farms and coal plants to build and expand without any environmental review or public input;
- Limiting agency accountability: Creates unreasonably short deadlines to challenge inadequate reviews, and limits courts’ ability to stop unlawful projects; and
- Putting polluter profits above science and the environment: Turns NEPA on its head by requiring agencies to prioritize corporate interests over the public interest and limiting their ability to consider the best science.
"Today's absurd House vote is yet another handout to corporate polluters at the expense of everyday people who have to live with the real-world impacts of toxic pollution from dirty industries like fossil fuels and factory farms," Heinzen argued. "This nonsense must be dead on arrival in the Senate."
Other campaigners also looked to the upper chamber after the vote. Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center, said that "renewable energy and climate advocates in the Senate must hold the line against the SPEED Act's evisceration of our bedrock environmental and community protection law."
Allie Rosenbluth, Oil Change International's US campaign manager, stressed that "our senators must stand up against the SPEED Act's attempts to undermine democratic decision-making, pollute our communities, and threaten our collective future."
For a Better Bayou's James Hiatt similarly said that "the SPEED Act protects corporate interests, not the public, and it should be rejected by any senator who claims to stand with the people."
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright, co-coordinator of Black Alliance for Peace's Climate, Environment, and Militarism Initiative, warned that the bill "represents yet another assault on the health of frontline, Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor white communities that have been designated as sacrifice zones by big polluters who bribe lawmakers with big money to continue a culture of extract, slash, burn, and emit at the expense of oppressed and marginalized peoples."
"Rather than speeding up the approval of dirty projects, Congress should increase funding for federal agencies and grassroots organizations accountable to frontline communities to carry out legally defensible and accurate environmental analyses," he continued, pointing to the Environmental Justice for All Act, previously led by the late Democratic Congressmen Raúl Grijalva (Ariz.) and Donald McEachin (Va.).
Mar Zepeda Salazar, legislative director at Climate Justice Alliance, also pointed to that alternative: "The SPEED Act fast-tracks harmful fossil fuel and polluting projects, not the community-led clean energy solutions families and Indigenous peoples across the country have long called for. Instead of pushing the SPEED Act—a bill that would strip away what few legal protections communities still have, weaken safeguards for clean air, land, and water near new industrial development, and sidestep meaningful consultation with federally recognized tribal nations—Congress should be advancing real, community-driven permitting reform."
"Examples include the Environmental Justice for All Act, which lays out meaningful public engagement, strong public health protections, respect for tribal sovereignty and consultation obligations, and serious investments in agencies and staff," she said.
Representatives from the Institute for Policy Studies, Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples, and Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice also spoke out against what David Watkins, director of government affairs for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, condemned as "a sizable holiday gift basket for Big Oil and Gas." He, too, urged the Senate to "reject this retrograde legislation and stand up to the deep-pocketed, polluting industries lobbying for it."
Lauren Pagel, policy director at Earthworks, pointed out that passing the SPEED Act wasn't the only way in which the House on Thursday "chose corporate interests over people, Indigenous Peoples' rights, and our environment." It also passed the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act, which "will remove already-scarce protections for natural resources and sacred cultural sites in US mining law."
"Today's House votes are a step backwards for our nation, but we continue to stand firm for the rights of the people and places on the frontlines of oil, gas, and mining," Pagel said. "Communities and ecosystems shouldn't pay the price while corporations rush to profit off extraction—with a helping hand from our elected officials."
Along with those two pieces of legislation, Public Citizen pointed to the House's approval of the Power Plant Reliability Act and Reliable Power Act earlier this week. David Arkush, director of the consumer advocacy group's Climate Program, said that the bills advancing through Congress "under the guise of 'bipartisan permitting reform' are blatant handouts to the fossil fuel and mining industries."
"We need real action to lower energy bills for American families and combat the climate crisis," Arkush asserted, calling on congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump "to fast-track a buildout of renewable energy, storage, and transmission—an approach that would not just make energy more affordable and sustainable, but create US jobs and bolster competitiveness with China, which is rapidly outpacing the US on the energy technologies of the future."
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