Among President Donald Trump’s four May executive actions seeking to “reinvigorate” the United States’ nuclear energy industry was one “ordering the reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” the president-appointed but independent five-seat regulatory board that oversees safety in nuclear energy development.

The president took a step in reforming the commission, led by Democrats 3–2, on June 13 when he fired Christopher Hanson, a Democrat he appointed in 2020 and who served as commission chair under President Joe Biden from 2021 to 2025, without any public announcement or accompanying statement on why.

Trump selected Republican David Wright to serve as chair but did not name a replacement for Hanson, whose term was to expire in 2029, and who technically remains in the seat until June 30.

“Late on Friday, President Trump terminated my position with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission without cause, contrary to existing law and longstanding precedent regarding removal of independent agency appointees,” he said.

A senior advisor with the Department of Energy who served as a senior analyst for the department’s chief financial officer before his June 2020 appointment to the commission board, Hanson has a quarter century of working in private industry as an energy development project engineer, analyst, and research associate.

“My focus over the last five years has been to prepare the agency for anticipated change in the energy sector, while preserving the independence, integrity, and bipartisan nature of the world’s gold standard nuclear safety institution,” he said.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said on June 16 in emailed responses to media queries that Hanson’s dismissal was done within the president’s authority to enhance the agency’s effectiveness.

“All organizations are more effective when leaders are rowing in the same direction. President Trump reserves the right to remove employees within his own Executive Branch who exert his executive authority,” she said.

Trump has expressed frustration with the 10-to-20 year permitting timelines in building new nuclear-power electricity plants and in his executive orders called on Congress to trim back those timelines, especially for the 60-plus emerging reactor technologies, such as “plug-in” small nuclear reactors, natrium-cooled reactors, “fast fission” reactors, and fusion reactors.

While the United States is the world’s largest generator and consumer of nuclear energy with 94 nuclear reactors in 55 power plants, most were built from 1970 to 1990 and average more than 40 years in service.

Democrats and many nuclear industry experts said firing Hanson makes no sense except as a further exertion of the president’s dismantling of agencies and boards designed to be independent and nonpartisan because of the technical issues they contend with.

The administration has since moved to boot Democrats from the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

A judge ruled in June that the firing of three Democrats from the Consumer Product Safety Commission was illegal.