Big Tech Is Rushing Into Nuclear Energy, and Bypassing Safety Oversight

By Haley Zaremba - Apr 16, 2026, 4:00 PM CDT

• A growing number of nuclear startups are opting out of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), the voluntary safety watchdog created after Three Mile Island — breaking a decades-long industry norm.

• The Trump administration is actively weakening existing nuclear safety regulations, including a May 2025 executive order directing the NRC to reconsider core radiation exposure standards, to accelerate domestic nuclear expansion.

• As the NRC has offloaded some regulatory responsibilities to the INPO, companies that decline membership now effectively operate outside both layers of oversight — raising serious public safety concerns.

While most countries manage their nuclear energy as a public sector, controlled and maintained by the state, the United States takes a uniquely American – which is to say, privatized – approach. As the tech sector becomes increasingly involved in nuclear energy and in the energy industry as a whole thanks to the insatiable energy needs of the AI boom, the nuclear energy landscape is changing. While there are some benefits to letting private interests compete in the nuclear energy sector in significant numbers, there are also considerable drawbacks, including the safety and oversight of these ventures. This is extremely concerning considering what can happen when nuclear energy goes wrong.

And the United States is no stranger to nuclear accidents. In 1979, a partial nuclear meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania released radioactive materials into the environment. While the accident was relatively minor, causing no detectable harm to the public or the plant's workers, it was a wakeup call for the nation. In response, The Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, or INPO, was created as a sort of watchdog organization to ensure safety compliance in nuclear plants across the United States.

But the appetite for such compliance has flagged considerably in the intervening years. While joining the INPO has always been voluntary, every single nuclear power plant operator has always joined. Until recently, that is. A study released earlier this month by Politico's E&E News found that a growing number of nuclear startups are declining to join the INPO.

These companies are balking at the invasivement of the organization, and the economic costs of compliance – but those hurdles are the whole point. When it comes to nuclear safety, rigor is key. And investigations have found that the INPO actually saves money for nuclear plants in the long run by diagnosing potential issues early, and thereby avoiding snags and shutdowns.

But Silicon Valley apparently doesn’t see it that way. “These entities are businesses, and they’re trying to make money,” Scott Morris, an industry consultant and former Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) official, told E&E. “Any infrastructure that you put around that entity that is not directly contributing to its bottom line, it’s going to be questioned.”

But Big Tech is not solely to blame for a backslide in nuclear safety measures. In fact, their priorities are reflective of a larger sea change trickling down from the Oval Office. The Trump Administration is hell-bent on a domestic nuclear power revival, and is actively seeking to undermine existing safety regulations in order to fast-track the sector's expansion.

An executive order issued in May of last year mandates that the NRC “reconsider reliance on the linear no-threshold (LNT) model for radiation exposure and the ‘as low as reasonably achievable’ standard,” among other requirements, in order to “reestablish the United States as the global leader in nuclear energy.”

As a part of the reorganization of the NRC, the government has actually offloaded additional responsibilities to the INPO, making membership more important for public safety than ever before – and effectively making previous mandates under the NRC completely optional for nuclear energy startups that decline to join the INPO.

“The NRC has delegated some of its regulatory authority, so to speak, to INPO, specifically in the realm of operations and maintenance training programs,” Morris went on to explain. “The NRC and INPO are not duplicative; they’re complementary.”

While safety is the largest potential casualty of the privatization and Big Tech takeover of the domestic nuclear energy sector, it is not the only drawback. “If you don’t have a financial stake in the nuclear race,” Futurism recently wrote, “you might notice this arrangement comes with side effects like chronic understaffing and public subsidies of private profit.”

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com