NRC speeds reactor licensing, approves first advanced construction permit

The clearest test of the NRC’s modernization push is not a policy memo. It is a fuel-cycle license: TRISO-X’s approval to fabricate commercial TRISO fuel in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the first Category II fuel fabrication facility ever cleared in the United States.

That milestone gives the agency something concrete to point to as it marks a year under Executive Order 14300, signed by Donald J. Trump on May 23, 2025. The order sent the Nuclear Regulatory Commission into a wholesale review of its regulations and guidance, with the agency saying proposed rulemakings were due within nine months and final rules within 18 months. By mid-May 2026, the NRC said 27 rulemakings were planned, five rules had been finalized, and seven proposed rules had been published for comment.

On the reactor side, the NRC’s strongest speed claim belongs to TerraPower’s Kemmerer Power Station Unit 1 in Wyoming. Staff said they completed the technical review in less than 18 months and nine months ahead of schedule, and the final safety review found no safety issues that would block the permit. It was the first commercial reactor the NRC approved for construction in nearly a decade and the first non-light-water reactor approval in more than 40 years, a real signal that the agency is willing to move advanced designs through the pipeline faster than in the recent past.

The fuel-cycle example may be the more telling one. The NRC issued Special Nuclear Material License No. SNM-7007 to TRISO-X, a wholly owned subsidiary of X-energy, on February 13, 2026. The plant is planned for a 110-acre greenfield site in Oak Ridge, in Roane County, and the license runs for 40 years. In practice, that means the modernization push is reaching beyond reactor headlines and into the parts of the supply chain that make advanced deployment possible in the first place.

The same pattern shows up in the KRONOS microreactor project at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The NRC received the construction permit application on March 31, 2026 and accepted it for docketing on May 18, a pace that suggests the agency is trying to tighten the front end of review without waiting for a full docket to slow everything down. The university says the Champaign County project is meant to support hands-on training and serve as a demonstration platform for microreactors.

Still, speed has not replaced scrutiny. The Palisades restart, approved by the NRC on May 20, became the first time in U.S. history that a decommissioning plant was cleared to return to operational status. Palisades stopped generating power in May 2022, Holtec began filing restart-related requests in late 2023, and the original operating license would run to March 24, 2031 if the plant returns. That is the trade-off the NRC is now selling: faster movement, more predictable paths, and a regulator still trying to prove it can do both without loosening the standard.