Trump Appoints New US Nuclear Regulatory Chief

Ho Nieh has vowed to sustain safety standards while ‘designing the future.’

Ho K. Nieh is sworn in as a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission member by former Commissioner William Ostendorff as his wife, Kerry, observes in Washington on Dec. 16, 2025. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

President Donald Trump has tapped Ho K. Nieh to chair the five-member Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the third leadership change in less than a year at the nation’s nuclear safety agency.

Nieh was among two commissioners appointed in December 2025 to fill seats vacated by Christopher Hanson, who was fired in June after being removed as chair on the president’s first day in office, and Annie Caputo, who resigned in July.

“I look forward to continuing to work with the dedicated NRC staff and my fellow commissioners, and I am energized by what we will accomplish together to enable the safe and secure use of nuclear technologies,” Nieh said in a Jan. 9 statement posted by the NRC.

Hanson, a Democrat appointed by President Joe Biden in 2021, and Caputo, a Republican appointed by Trump in 2017, were succeeded by Nieh and Douglas Weaver, both Republicans. Commissioners serve five-year terms. No more than three may be of the same political party.

Republican David Wright had been serving as chair since July 2025. He will remain on the commission.

Nieh worked at the NRC for more than 20 years as an inspector and served as director of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation before being hired in March 2021 by Atlanta-based Southern Company as a vice president overseeing regulatory affairs for its subsidiary, Southern Nuclear Operating Company.

Southern Nuclear operates eight nuclear units in Georgia and Alabama, including Georgia Power Vogtle 3 and 4 plants, the only new nuclear reactors to be built in the United States in three decades.

Trump issued four executive orders on May 23, 2025, that call for the NRC to license 10 new reactors by 2030 and for the nation to quadruple its nuclear energy capacity by 2050.

One of those actions—Executive Order 14300—“reforms” the commission, which the president accused of “throttling nuclear power development” by levying excessive fees and imposing burdensome regulations, resulting in the commission’s failure “to license new reactors even as technological advances promise to make nuclear power safer, cheaper, more adaptable, and more abundant than ever.”

“With the support of Executive Order 14300 and the ADVANCE Act, the NRC is designing the future of nuclear safety regulation,” Nieh said, referring to the bipartisan 2024 bill that authorizes billions of dollars for nuclear energy development.

Domestic innovators are developing more than 30 new reactor designs with 10 “first-mover” companies engaged in an Energy Reactor Pilot Program that will award federal funding for advancing their technologies if they achieve “criticality” by July 4, 2026.

During a four-hour Jan. 7 hearing before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Energy Subcommittee, Democrats said Trump administration’s actions in slashing the Department of Energy’s workforce by 3,500, firing and hiring NRC commissioners, and requiring all reactor-related rule-making be conducted by the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs with little public input will end up derailing the momentum the president is spurring.

Reps. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), Marc Veasey (D-Texas), and Rob Menendez (D-N.J.) accused Trump of “politicalizing” the NRC’s independence and transparency by making it “a political arm of the White House, where the rules can change every election.”

The Democrats said the administration is fostering uncertainty with investors and concerns about safety and that the public is only now becoming more receptive to nuclear energy in the wake of the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima accidents.

They each queried four industry witnesses who testified at the hearing about those concerns and received acknowledgments that the administration’s actions are raising issues within the industry and with investors. There was little pushback from panel Republicans.

The administration’s “attacks on the NRC’s independence undermines the very gold standards in safety that makes our technology the most desirable in the world,” Veasey said.