Part 1 of 2 Parts
Federal agencies were created to protect the public from unsafe drugs, financial fraud, environmental pollution, and countless other threats. But what happens when the watchdogs start working for the companies they’re supposed to watch? Regulatory capture occurs when industries gain so much influence over their regulators that agencies end up serving corporate interests instead of the public good.
It’s not always corruption as we usually recognize it. Sometimes it’s more subtle: former regulators getting lucrative industry jobs, agencies relying too much on company data, or officials absorbing industry viewpoints after years of close contact.
The challenge is real and persistent. Agencies must be independent from political pressure to make sound, expert decisions. But that same independence can create space for industry influence to slip in. Understanding this threat matters because it can affect everything from the safety of your medications to the stability of the financial system.
The rate of undermining the statutory authority of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to serve as the cornerstone of nuclear safety in the United States and across the world is accelerating.
The recent directive by Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staff member Adam Blake to NRC staff to “rubber stamp” Department of Energy (DoE) and Department of Defense (DoD) nuclear projects indicates how far and deeply these cracks have advanced in the pillars of nuclear safety culture within the federal government.
The ultimate danger is that weakening safety oversight precisely when unproven reactor technologies need the most rigorous review sets the stage for the kind of serious accident that could undermine public confidence in nuclear power for generations.
There is a saying that “Nuclear power is not inherently unsafe, but nuclear power is inherently unforgiving.” The implication of this saying is quite clear: Inattention to safety details has important consequences. These concerns have led Congress to wisely separate the original Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) into two agencies with valuable tensions. One is the DoE, which studies and promotes multiple forms of energy, including nuclear power. The other agency is the NRC, with the function of nuclear safety above all else.
During the more than seventy-year experiment with nuclear power, “defense in depth” safety margins have prevented a variety of nuclear accidents from the mundane to the catastrophic. However, there have also been numerous near misses, such those at Browns Ferry (1975) and Three Mile Island (1979), and tragic failures at Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011).
With the advent of lower-cost hydraulically fractured fossil gas burned in combined cycle turbines and low-cost renewable wind, solar and storage energy sources, nuclear power is no longer a low-cost provider. All new nuclear projects have also failed to stay on budget and on schedule.
The past three nuclear reactors to come online, all in the nuclear-friendly southeastern U.S., highlight these major failures. The Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar 2 was over forty years behind schedule and ultimately cost six billion dollars while originally estimated to be less than one billion dollars. Georgia Power’s Vogtle 3 and 4 were seven years delayed and $21 billion over the originally estimated budget. While pragmatic utility managers have moved away from nuclear power to embrace less risky, more predictable, and less complex energy solutions, nuclear zealots have tried to blame “over-regulation” and “government bureaucracy” for problems that are inherent in nuclear technology itself.
Please read Part 2 next