Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Annie Caputo (right) is congratulated by then-NRC Chair Kristine Svinicki after taking her oath of office. NRC
This story originally appeared on the author’s substack newsletter, Field Notes From Alexander C. Kaufman, to which you can subscribe here.
A top official at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is resigning from her post amid the Trump administration’s attempts to overhaul atomic energy rules and chip away at the agency’s independence.
Commissioner Annie Caputo, a Republican whom President Donald Trump initially nominated to the five-member NRC in May 2017, announced her plans in an email to staff on Tuesday, as this newsletter first reported. She had another year left on her five-year term after being reappointed by former President Joe Biden in 2022. The NRC confirmed to me that Caputo will leave once the newly confirmed agency chair, David Wright, is sworn in, noting that Wright’s paperwork is still being processed. The NRC also provided a copy of Caputo’s email (see below), in which she said she planned to “more fully focus on my family.”
“Caputo was very industry friendly Republican. If her resignation signals more radical changes, then the nuclear industry could find itself with a yet more unstable investment climate paired with a diminishing social license to operate,” Emmet Penney, a senior fellow at the right-leaning Foundation for American Innovation, told me. “A regulatory whipsaw effect would strangle the nuclear renaissance in its crib—a brutal and humiliating own-goal for energy dominance.”
The NRC was established in 1975 in response to concerns that its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission, played too big a role in promoting the industry it was supposed to regulate. New legislation enacted last year, called the ADVANCE Act, rewrote part of the NRC’s mission statement to allow the panel to broaden its efforts to protect public health by considering the risks of not building enough nuclear reactors and rendering the country more reliant on polluting fossil-fuel power.
While the NRC has plenty of protocols that many agree could help speed up approvals of new nuclear plants, such as unnecessary hearings that can cost developers upward of $500,000, experts say the agency has helped insulate atomic energy projects from litigation that could destroy proposal just by dragging out court cases.
“The NRC is under full-scale attack from a bunch of folks who don’t seem to understand the crucial role the NRC plays in protecting nuclear energy from endless, arbitrary legal attack and investment-killing uncertainty,” Mark Nelson, the founder of the nuclear consultancy Radiant Energy Group, told me.
“Caputo apparently resigned rather than be compromised by politics of NRC independence destruction,” he added. “The NRC helps ensure that there is only a tiny, extremely tough attack surface for antinuclear legal efforts to target.”
The resignation comes one day after the Senate voted to confirm 50-39 to confirm Wright as the new chair of the NRC as Democrats protested the appointment. When the Senate last voted to confirm Wright to the commission, in 2020, his nomination was so uncontroversial the chamber gave its approval by a simple voice vote.
The upheaval now is a sign of how the new administration has politicized an agency that was once an oasis of bipartisan consensus.
In May, Trump signed four executive orders aiming to spur a renaissance of reactor construction. One order included a provocative, if scientifically defensible, measure to reconsider the formula used to calculate the health risk posed by radiation.
Last month, Trump fired Christopher Hanson, the NRC’s former Democratic chair, in a move critics cast as an illegal test of the White House’s authority over what has functioned for half a century as an independent agency—one whose members a president could appoint, but not eject for political reasons.
Earlier this month, E&E News reported that Adam Blake, the “Department of Government Efficiency” representative detailed to the NRC, told the agency’s chair and top staff they will be expected to “rubber stamp” approval of new reactors tested by the departments of Energy and Defense.
One industry executive, who spoke on condition on anonymity, told me the cautious culture at the NRC is holding back new reactors and that Trump should clear house.
“Most of the entrenched management, even those that are seemingly cooperative with efforts for reform and modernization, when actually put to the test, will delay reactor sign-off,” the executive said, “rather than taking even the smallest amount of professional risk of ‘getting it wrong’ even if that worst case consequence is negligible to public health.”
Given the momentum the industry currently has and the time it takes build new plants, however, damaging overhauls could prove a setback, said Brett Rampal, the senior director of nuclear and power strategy at the consultancy Veriten.
“Historically, the NRC has been a bastion of independence,” Rampal told me. “Without thoughtful reform, any change that could be seen as targeting that independence could create unintended ripples and consequences that could limit developers’ abilities to capitalize on the promises they are currently making.”
Here is the full text of Caputo’s statement to NRC staff:
I will always be thankful for the opportunity to serve our great nation alongside such skilled and dedicated staff, and I thank you for your support during my time as Commissioner. As I step away, I’m confident the agency will continue to evolve under Chairman Wright’s leadership, excelling as a world class regulator and enabling the safe and secure use of nuclear technologies for the benefit of our society.
It has been my honor and privilege to serve as a commissioner, contributing to the work of the agency. I have decided to resign from the Commission, effective upon the swearing in of my colleague David Wright. The time has come for me to more fully focus on my family.
Naturally, this is a time to reflect on several significant agency accomplishments where I am proud to have played a role and where I have appreciated the bipartisan collaboration with my fellow commissioners including: final resolution of post-Fukushima regulatory actions; development of a technology-inclusive, risk-informed and performance-based regulatory framework for advanced reactors; risk-informed emergency preparedness zones for advanced reactors; setting the course for microreactor regulation; improving regulatory discipline through revisions to backfitting and forward-fitting guidance; enabling the efficient regulation of fusion machines; defining a licensing framework for mine waste remediation; and streamlining environmental reviews.
During my tenure, I have sought to be a thorough student of the issues, crafting substantive votes that enable the safe and secure use of nuclear technologies, consistent with the NRC’s Principles of Good Regulation. I believe the Administration’s recent Executive Orders and the bi-partisan ADVANCE Act have given the agency a platform for change, as evidenced by the efficiency gains under development for the Reactor Oversight Process and last week’s historical authorization of the Palisades plant’s return to operational service.