McCormick blasts Trump administration’s “reckless rush” on uranium enrichment facility

Progressive New Jersey Democrat Lisa McCormick issued a searing condemnation of the Trump administration’s plan to cram a 12‑month technical review of a major new uranium enrichment facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, charging that the breakneck timeline is not only dangerously incompetent but also promotes an inherently unacceptable energy source.

“Let’s be clear: nuclear fission is a dead end,” McCormick said. “The intergenerational nightmare of high‑level radioactive waste that remains toxic for hundreds of thousands of years, the catastrophic risks of a major accident or terrorist attack, and the staggering upfront capital costs that make every fission plant a financial boondoggle – these are not problems to be managed. These are reasons to reject the technology outright.”

McCormick added that the nation should only consider nuclear energy acceptable if the nation could “perfect fusion” – a radically different, cleaner technology that remains decades away from commercial viability.

“Fusion might one day offer a genuine low‑carbon future without the horrors of meltdowns or million‑year waste. But rushing to expand today’s dangerous, dirty fission infrastructure is the opposite of progress,” said McCormick.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently accepted for review an application from Orano Enrichment USA LLC to build and operate “Project IKE” – a gas centrifuge facility that would produce low‑enriched uranium for commercial power plants.

The agency intends to complete its technical review within one year, a timeline driven by Executive Order 14300 and the ADVANCE Act’s push for “efficiency.”

McCormick did not mince words about the administration’s capacity to handle such a complex review.

“The Trump administration has a well‑documented penchant for hiring the unqualified, the crony, and the clueless,” McCormick said. “From Cabinet secretaries who couldn’t pass a basic civics test to political appointees who think safety regulations are ‘optional,’ this White House has turned incompetence into an art form. Now they want to rush a first‑of‑a‑kind nuclear license in 12 months? That is not efficiency. That is a disaster waiting to happen.”

She went on to characterize the accelerated timeline as “utterly senseless” and “manufactured urgency.”

“There is zero credible reason to jam this review into a single year,” McCormick said. “No previous NRC commission has ever completed a license review of comparable complexity for a major new enrichment facility in 12 months – because it cannot be done safely. The only thing being rushed is the administration’s willingness to cut corners, silence experts, and gamble with the lives of American families.”

McCormick highlighted a cascade of specific risks that she said the rushed process would magnify:

• Incomplete safety analyses that could miss criticality accident risks, UF₆ handling hazards, or centrifuge cascade fire dangers – flaws that would only become apparent after construction, if at all.
• Security nightmares – turning the Oak Ridge facility into a high‑value terrorist target, creating insider‑threat vulnerabilities, and raising the specter of weapons‑grade material diversion from a supposedly “low‑enriched” plant.
• Environmental recklessness – from accidental releases of deadly hydrofluoric acid to the long‑term storage of millions of kilograms of chemically toxic depleted uranium tails, with no permanent solution in sight.
• A procedurally backward hearing process that schedules public input after the NRC’s technical staff has already recommended a decision – a “rubber stamp masquerading as democracy.”

She also savaged the staffing implications.

“We have a shallow pool of truly qualified centrifuge operators and nuclear engineers in this country,” McCormick said. “Instead of investing in training, the Trump administration will likely hand out jobs to political loyalists with no business touching nuclear material. Rushing to hire unqualified personnel is not a workforce plan – it’s an accident report waiting to be written.”

On economic resilience, McCormick dismissed the national security argument for domestic enrichment.

“Replacing foreign dependence with a single domestic facility is not energy independence – it’s a single point of failure,” McCormick said. “One cyberattack, one natural disaster, one catastrophic accident at Project IKE, and 20% of America’s electricity goes dark. That is insane energy policy.”

McCormick demanded that the NRC immediately halt the accelerated review, scrap the post‑hoc hearing model, and answer three damning questions:

1. Can the NRC name even one prior, equally complex first‑of‑a‑kind license review it completed in 12 months?
2. What specific ‘reforms’ under the ADVANCE Act are being applied to this review, and why has no independent safety body vetted them?
3. How can any reasonable person believe that rushing this project serves anything other than the Trump administration’s political ambition and the enrichment industry’s bottom line?

“Nuclear fission is a failed promise – dangerous, dirty, and economically irrational,” McCormick said. “The Trump administration’s reckless, incompetent rush to license Project IKE is not about energy security. It is about handing a gift to corporate cronies while putting American lives at risk. We will fight this every step of the way.”