Last summer, officials from the Department of Energy convened at the Idaho National Laboratory, an expansive 890-square-mile area in Idaho’s eastern desert. This site, where the U.S. government built its initial nuclear power plant in 1951, continues to be a testing ground for advanced technology.
The meeting, led by 31-year-old lawyer Seth Cohen, focused on the future of nuclear energy under the Trump administration. Despite having only five years of experience since law school and no substantial background in nuclear law or policy, Cohen had recently joined the government through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team.
Cohen guided the group through discussions on nuclear reactor design licensing, often minimizing health and safety concerns. When the topic of radiation exposure at test sites arose, Cohen interjected.
“They are testing in Utah. … I don’t know, like 70 people live there,” he remarked.
“But … there’s lots of babies,” one staff member countered, highlighting the vulnerability of infants, pregnant women, and other groups to cancer risks from low-level radiation.
“They’ve been downwind before,” joked another staff member.
“This is why we don’t use AI transcription in meetings,” added someone else.
ProPublica reviewed records from this meeting, offering a glimpse into a significant policy shift. The Trump administration is transforming nuclear energy regulation, aiming to boost energy supplies for artificial intelligence.
Seasoned experts are being sidelined, and regulations are being rapidly rewritten. New nuclear energy companies, backed by Silicon Valley funds and political ties, are gaining policy influence. Cohen and others are introducing a “move fast and break things” approach to regulation.
The Trump administration has aggressively targeted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), an independent bipartisan body responsible for nuclear plant approvals and safety. Though not widely known, the NRC sets global safety standards. Critics, particularly in Silicon Valley, view the NRC as a barrier to innovation. Last June, President Trump fired NRC Commissioner Christopher Hanson after Hanson spoke about the need for agency independence, marking the first such dismissal in NRC history.
In Idaho, Cohen dismissed the idea of NRC independence in the current administration.
“Assume the NRC is going to do whatever we tell the NRC to do,” he stated, according to records reviewed by ProPublica. By November, Cohen was appointed chief counsel for nuclear policy at the Department of Energy, overseeing a wide nuclear portfolio.
These aggressive strategies have significantly impacted the nuclear energy sector, causing concern among long-time industry advocates who fear the administration’s approach may undermine credible nuclear energy efforts.
“The regulator is no longer an independent regulator — we do not know whose interests it is serving,” cautioned Allison Macfarlane, former NRC chair under the Obama administration. “The safety culture is under threat.”
An analysis by ProPublica of NRC staffing data reveals a notable exodus: Over 400 people have left since Trump took office, with significant losses in reactor and nuclear materials safety teams and among veteran staff. New hires have been slow, with only about 60 in the first year of Trump’s administration compared to nearly 350 in the last year of Biden’s.
Some nuclear power proponents argue that the administration is fulfilling the urgent energy needs of AI and that the changes are not as perilous as some experts believe.
“I think the NRC has been frozen in time,” commented Brett Rampal, senior director of nuclear and power strategy at Veriten. “It’s a great time to get unfrozen and aim to work quickly.”
The White House deferred most questions from ProPublica to the Department of Energy, where spokesperson Olivia Tinari expressed the agency’s commitment to building more safe, high-quality nuclear energy facilities.
“Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, America’s nuclear industry is entering a new era that will provide reliable, abundant power for generations to come,” she wrote. The DOE is “committed to the highest standards of safety for American workers and communities.”
Cohen did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The NRC also declined to comment.
Blindsided by DOGE
The U.S. has not experienced a serious nuclear incident since the Three Mile Island partial meltdown in 1979. Many experts credit this to a strong regulatory framework and a robust safety culture.
Globally, major nuclear accidents have reinforced the resolve of past regulators to maintain independence from industry and politics. Japan’s Fukushima disaster, for example, was attributed to a close relationship between the industry and its oversight body, leading to inadequate safety assessments and oversight failures.
“We knew regulatory capture led directly to Fukushima and to Chernobyl,” stated Kathryn Huff, who served as assistant secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy during the Biden administration.
In the U.S., nuclear plant construction has stagnated, with only three new reactors completed in 25 years and minimal net new nuclear electricity added since 1990. While nuclear power accounts for about 20% of U.S. energy, the fleet is aging. Financing challenges and uncertainties around fuel access and disposal are often blamed for the slow growth.
However, an increasingly vocal group of industry advocates and deregulation supporters blame the slow growth on overly cautious and inefficient regulators. Billionaires Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, both venture capitalists with investments in nuclear energy, are influential Trump backers and vocal proponents of this view.
Andreessen was present at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club in Florida, after the 2024 election, helping select new administration staff. In late 2024, Thiel personally evaluated at least one candidate for the Office of Nuclear Energy, according to sources familiar with the discussions. Neither responded to requests for comment.
Four months into his second term, Trump issued executive orders to boost nuclear power development. “It’s a hot industry, it’s a brilliant industry,” Trump said alongside nuclear energy CEOs in the Oval Office. He added: “And it’s become very safe.”
These orders directed the NRC to cut its workforce, expedite reactor approvals, and revise safety rules. The DOE was tasked with facilitating pathways for advanced nuclear companies to test their designs.
Trump’s goal was to quadruple nuclear energy output and support AI data centers.
As DOGE restructured agencies, departures in the nuclear sector surged. Experts in nuclear regulations and safety left or were forced out. When Trump fired Hanson, a Democratic NRC commissioner, the administration explained the decision by stating, “All organizations are more effective when leaders are rowing in the same direction.”
In an unsigned email to ProPublica, the White House press office stated: “All commissioners are presidential appointees and can be fired just like any other appointee.”
In August, the NRC’s top attorney resigned and was replaced by oil and gas lawyer David Taggart, who had been working on DOGE cuts at the DOE. The nuclear office at the DOE had lost about a third of its staff, according to a January 2026 count by the Federation of American Scientists, a nonprofit focused on science and technology policy.
That summer, Cohen and a team of DOGE operatives arrived at the NRC offices, a series of unremarkable towers across from a Dunkin’ in Maryland. He was joined by Adam Blake, an investor who recently founded an AI medical startup, and Ankur Bansal, president of a real estate software company. Neither commented for this story.
ProPublica spoke with many career officials who felt blindsided: The new Trump appointees at the NRC seemed unfamiliar with the complexities of nuclear energy policy or law. One NRC lawyer who briefed the newcomers decided to resign, stating, “They were talking about quickly approving all these new reactors, and they didn’t seem to care that much about the rules — they wanted to carry out the wishes of the White House.”
At one point, Cohen distributed hats from Valar Atomics, a nuclear startup aiming to build a new reactor, according to sources and records seen by ProPublica. NRC staffers resisted; they were meant to oversee companies like Valar for safety compliance, not endorse them.
NRC ethics officials warned Cohen that distributing the hats likely violated conflict of interest rules. It showed a misunderstanding of the safety regulator’s role, said a former official familiar with the situation. “Imagine you live near a nuclear power plant, and you find out a supposedly independent safety regulator — the watchdog — is going around wearing the power plant’s branded hats,” the official said. “Would that make you feel safe?” The NRC and Cohen did not respond to requests for comment about the incident.
Valar is backed by Trump’s Silicon Valley allies, including Palmer Luckey, a defense contractor executive, and Shyam Sankar, Palantir’s chief technology officer.
It was among three nuclear reactor companies that sued the NRC last year, seeking to remove its authority to regulate reactors in favor of a state-level regulator. Before Trump’s presidency, legal experts believed the case would
