US Environmental Protections Under Attack: The NRC’s New NEPA Rule

Lynda Williams

 July 9, 2026

FacebookTwitterRedditBlueskyEmail

After more than a year of sweeping deregulation at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) aimed at paving the way for accelerated deployment of so-called “advanced” reactors, the agency has released one of its most consequential rules yet: a sweeping rewrite of its regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), known as Part 51. Released on July 7, 2026, the proposed rule would fundamentally change what environmental impacts the NRC must consider before licensing nuclear facilities.

This sweeping rewrite of the NRC’s NEPA regulations comes in direct response to President Trump’s January 20, 2025, Executive Order 14154, which required every federal agency to rewrite its NEPA regulations after the administration eliminated the government-wide NEPA rules previously issued by the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). Since then, federal agencies including the Departments of Energy, Interior, Agriculture, Defense, Transportation, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission have all revised and weakened their NEPA procedures. The NRC’s proposed Part 51 rule is the latest step in that government-wide effort to dismantle longstanding environmental review requirements, following Project 2025’s blueprint for gutting NEPA through streamlined permitting, elimination of cumulative impact analysis, environmental justice, reduced public participation, restricted judicial review, and greater reliance on project applicants to prepare environmental reviews.

The NRC’s proposed rewrite of Part 51 would largely limit environmental review to radiological impacts while excluding most chemical and other non-radiological hazards. The NRC bases this major change on several court decisions that it argues restrict the agency’s authority.

Chemical Hazards Removed

Before NEPA, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) argued that its responsibilities were largely limited to radiological hazards. In the landmark case Calvert Cliffs’ Coordinating Committee v. Atomic Energy Commission (1971), the court ruled that NEPA fundamentally changed those responsibilities by requiring the AEC to incorporate environmental values into its licensing decisions. The court held that the AEC was “not only permitted, but compelled, to take environmental values into account.” That decision became the legal foundation for more than fifty years of NRC environmental reviews that considered environmental impacts beyond radiation alone.

The NRC relies heavily on the Supreme Court’s 2025 decision in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, where the federal government was approving a railroad in Utah. Environmental groups argued that the Environmental Impact Statement should also analyze future oil drilling, oil refining, and other industrial activities that might occur because the railroad would transport crude oil. The Supreme Court ruled that those separate “upstream” and “downstream” projects did not have to be analyzed as part of the railroad approval.

The NRC argues that the same reasoning allows it to exclude non-radiological chemical hazards from its own NEPA reviews, even when those chemicals are part of the very project the NRC is reviewing. That omission could be challenged under the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires federal agencies to provide a reasoned explanation when they make major changes to longstanding policy.

Oklo, an advanced nuclear company backed by Sam Altman and Peter Thiel, recently received a share of a $19 million Department of Energy award for advanced fuel reprocessing, or “recycling.” Oklo wants to commercialize spent-fuel reprocessing in the United States using pyroprocessing, a chemical process that separates reusable uranium and plutonium from highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel through electrorefining in molten salts using cadmium, a known human carcinogen. Using cadmium is not some separate upstream or downstream project; it is an essential ingredient of the pyroprocessing facility the NRC would be licensing. Under the proposed Part 51 rule, the NRC argues that it would no longer have to analyze the environmental risks associated with cadmium simply because they are considered non-radiological.

Another example is Valar Atomics, a nuclear startup company backed by Anduril founder Palmer Luckey and Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar. Valar was selected under the DOE’s Fuel Line Pilot Program, which authorizes it to build and operate its own TRISO fuel fabrication facility without an NRC license during the non-commercial phase. Valar’s fabrication process relies on hazardous industrial chemicals, including nitric acid to dissolve the uranium and ammonia to form the fuel kernels, along with reactive gases used to apply the ceramic coatings. Under the current rule, the storage, handling, emissions, and exposure risks of these non-radiological chemicals could be pulled into the environmental analysis for such a facility. Under the new rule, they would be exempt—only the radiological content of the uranium would fall within the NRC’s required review, leaving the chemical hazards of the fabrication process unexamined.

The Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky, where decades of chemical processing left behind a groundwater plume of trichloroethylene and other contaminants still being cleaned up today. (Photo: U.S. DOE)

History shows why chemicals matter in nuclear projects across the fuel cycle. Some of America’s worst nuclear environmental disasters were driven not by radiation alone, but by industrial chemicals used throughout the nuclear fuel cycle. The Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant are contaminated by massive groundwater plumes of trichloroethylene (TCE), along with PCBs, solvents, and other hazardous chemicals. The Hanford Site—one of the most contaminated places on Earth—faces cleanup not only from radioactive waste but also from enormous quantities of carbon tetrachloride, chromium, nitrates, heavy metals, solvents, and other industrial contaminants.

Cumulative Impacts Omitted

Just as telling as the changes the NRC proposes is what it leaves out: cumulative impact analysis. Traditionally, one of NEPA’s central purposes has been to ensure that agencies evaluate not only the impacts of an individual project, but also the combined effects of that project together with other past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future actions. A project that appears insignificant in isolation may have significant environmental consequences when those impacts are added together. The proposed Part 51 rule no longer requires cumulative impact analysis as part of either an Environmental Assessment or an Environmental Impact Study.

The omission becomes even more significant when combined with the NRC’s proposed Part 57 licensing framework for “advanced” nuclear reactors. Part 57 would allow companies to deploy multiple identical reactors at the same site—or even across multiple sites—under a single construction permit and a single safety review of the reactor design rather than starting from scratch for every reactor. Part 57 governs how reactors are licensed; Part 51 governs what environmental impacts the NRC must analyze. Together, they determine what questions a large-scale reactor buildout actually has to answer.

Aalo Atomics is another advanced nuclear startup backed by Valor Equity Partners, whose investments include xAI and AI infrastructure. The company was selected by the Department of Energy to test its Aalo-X reactor at Idaho National Laboratory and is developing the Aalo Pod specifically to power AI data centers. Rather than deploying a single reactor, each Pod consists of five identical 10-megawatt sodium-cooled modular reactors connected to a single steam generator to produce 50 megawatts of electricity. The company has also stated that the design is intended to scale to even larger multi-reactor installations. Under Part 57, those reactors could be licensed under a single construction permit based on one reactor design. Yet under the proposed Part 51 rule, there is no requirement for the NRC to evaluate the cumulative environmental impacts of all five reactors operating together at one site—not the combined water use, the combined radiological source term, the combined waste inventory, the combined chemical inventories, or the total burden placed on the surrounding community.

A rendering of Aalo Atomics’ proposed “Aalo Pod” — five 10-megawatt sodium-cooled reactors sharing a single steam generator, designed to power AI data centers.

For decades, cumulative impact analysis has been one of the principal legal tools used by environmental organizations, Tribes, and local communities to challenge inadequate environmental reviews. Courts have repeatedly required agencies to consider the combined effects of related actions rather than evaluating projects one piece at a time. Removing cumulative impact analysis from Part 51 therefore does more than shorten environmental reviews—it eliminates one of the most important legal safeguards that has held agencies accountable under NEPA.

NEPA trumps Trump

Eliminating cumulative impact review and narrowing “effects” to radiation alone rests on shaky legal ground. The NRC’s attempt to gut environmental protections and public oversight of new nuclear projects on the strength of President Trump’s executive orders is a regulatory overreach and an abuse of its power. NEPA is law: before a federal agency approves a project, it must examine the environmental consequences from every aspect of the project itself. NEPA Law trumps Trump’s executive orders.

Submit your comments now. Your voice matters. Docket NRC–2025–0478

Comment deadline: August 21, 2026: https://www.regulations.gov/docket/NRC-2025-0478

Lynda Williams is a physicist and environmental activist living in Hawaii. She can be found at scientainment.com and on Bluesky @lyndalovon.bksy.social

Vatican Excommunicates Right Wing Fundamentalists in First Test of Leo’s Papacy

Andie Stewart

 July 9, 2026

FacebookTwitterRedditBlueskyEmail

Photo by Christian Harb

On July 2, 2026, the Vatican announced formally that the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), a fundamentalist sect, had entered into schism by consecrating four Bishops without authorization from Pope Leo XIV, thereby incurring latae sententiae, or automatic, excommunication upon themselves. After months of intransigence in the face of outreach from Rome, SSPX carried through with plans it had announced initially last February, a highly-symbolic act timed to memorialize another instance, nearly four decades earlier, when their right wing founder Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre had incurred the same penalties for the same actions.

This was the first overt challenge to Leo’s papacy and his authority over the Church. Since his election nearly two years ago, right wing forces have been congregating to form an opposition bloc.

For instance, the illicit consecration ceremony SSPX held in Switzerland last Wednesday counted in attendance members of several right wing Italian political parties and various individual operatives were likewise attached to the ceremony. Steve Bannon has previously spoken highly of the sect on his podcast. The election of Robert Prevost as Pope Leo XIV has brought to the surface a long-simmering divide between progressive and conservative Catholics, one underwritten by immense amounts of money. It provides key insights into the Christian Nationalist psyche of people like Vice President J.D. Vance and the conservative majority of the Supreme Court.

The most temporal manifestation of this rivalry arose when the late Pope Francis implemented financial oversight reforms in the Vatican Bank, a longtime money laundering outlet for organized crime, authoritarian dictators, and the CIA. This included closure of suspicious accounts and revising the rules of eligibility to become a depositor. This in particular was a point of antagonism for the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, whose emails reveal communications with Bannon that sought to instigate a coordinated campaign against Pope Francis. One can imagine that Epstein either used the Vatican Bank or relied on those who did so to finance both licit and illicit operations in Eastern Europe. The email cache makes evident that Epstein trafficked women from the region and so it is possible to envision the utility of a Vatican Bank account as a source of clean and easily-accessed money.

The confrontation with the SSPX was never about the hobby-horses of the Latin Mass, or debates over the Second Vatican Council, or the meaning of the word “Tradition” in Catholic theology, it was a bald-faced act of insubordination trying to test limits. For example, the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, an organization in full communion with Rome, offers the Latin Mass that SSPX insists would otherwise be lost were it not for these unauthorized consecrations. What truly laid behind the confrontation with SSPX was a power grab by those who subscribe to a strand of deeply-regressive and misogynist Catholicism that grants succor to various neo-fascist right ideologues in the European Union and the United States.

The next manifestation of this confrontation will be when Leo tries to reform the infamous Opus Dei, likewise known for its own litany of human rights abuses and cult-like practices. (Check out this interview with Gareth Gore for further insights.)

It has long been suspected that several Supreme Court Justices, such as Alito and Roberts, either belong to the group or at least receive ministry from an Opus Dei chapel that is located quite close to the Court building. Known for using outdated practices like corporal mortification of the flesh and other Medieval extremities, Leo has indicated his intention make the group more accountable to local Bishops, who frequently report friction with Opus Dei groups in their Dioceses. This fundamentally changes the status Pope John Paul II granted them as a Personal Prelature, a group allowed to function with complete autonomy and only beholden to the internal leadership, a near-vigilante status in theological terms that can and does enable tremendous abuse of power.

At the heart of Opus Dei lies a warped revision of Catholic theology. It embraces the Protestant Prosperity Gospel and rejects not just a preferential option for the poor but the basic tenet of the Church’s millennia-long ministry to the impoverished. Wealthy and elite members of Opus Dei are treated regally in their facilities by a coterie of low-income workers called numenaries, many from the Global South, who experience extraordinary hyper-exploitation. In spite of Christ’s claim about camels and needles, Opus Dei seems certain that the Kingdom of God is Within Your Bank Account, a religion every Libertarian dreams of.

This is not an unforeseen development given the harsh repression of Latin American Liberation Theology by John Paul II in the 1980s. As Carl Bernstein reported in his 1992 Time Magazine story ‘The Holy Alliance,’ the Polish pontiff worked closely with the Reagan administration to support the Solidarność labor union in the homeland of His Holiness, collaborating with the CIA and AFL-CIO to import technology and materiel necessary for its survival under martial law by the Communist government when it experienced extended repression. According to Gore’s reportage, the Pope envisioned deploying Opus Dei missionaries behind the Iron Curtain to support the Solidarność faction backed by Lech Walesa, part of the logic that governed his decision to grant them the unique and extraordinary status of Personal Prelature.

In this period, Reagan appointed the conservative Catholic businessman William Casey as Director of Central Intelligence, where he oversaw operations that supported the Polish while simultaneously backing the forces repressing the Latin Americans. Fr. Ernesto Cardenal, a Jesuit who served as Minister of Culture for the Nicaraguan Sandinista government, was publicly shamed and sanctioned in 1984 by the Pope when the Vatican plane landed on the tarmac. By contrast, there never were penalties for anti-government priests in Poland, instead their efforts were validated by the Pope. In August of that year, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, published his ‘Instruction on Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of Liberation,’’ solidifying the Vatican stigma of heresy upon the entire movement in a way that enabled Contra death squads. Whether a calculated outcome or a true accident of history, John Paul effectively and successfully horse-traded Nicaragua for Poland. By anathematizing Liberation Theology so publicly and blatantly, shaming and shunning its membership as ‘Marxist’ heretics, the Vatican removed whatever shield of protection that was traditionally accorded the Church and clergy/religious by the ruling elite. The oligarchic and latifundia classes, previously put on the defensive by a social movement widely embraced by the faithful, suddenly found themselves granted a powerful tool necessary for the construction of a white terror. The radical base communities were massacred, nuns and priests were murdered, and the rich were empowered once again.

And all along, watching on the sidelines, was Fr. Robert Francis Prevost. He was an Augustinian in Chulucanas, Peru, during a period when Americans were being killed by Contras, arriving in 1985 after completing his seminary studies, where he had participated in anti-nuclear proliferation protests. What and how he thinks about those violent early days of his priesthood remains to be seen. But it is impossible to ignore the historic confluence of forces that bring about these new developments.

First published on Substack.

Andie Stewart is a documentary film maker and reporter who lives outside Providence.  His film, AARON BRIGGS AND THE HMS GASPEE, about the historical role of Brown University in the slave trade, is available for purchase on Amazon Instant Video or on DVD.