Comment on FR Doc # 2026-10727

As a pediatric nurse, I strongly oppose recklessly allowing DOE-HQ-2025-0603 to proceed without full public hearings and congressional oversight. This is absolutely outrageous! This "direct final rule" is an attempt to circumvent existing legislation including the allocation of funds without addressing the harm that will occur, the intent of Congress, or outstanding commitments from the federal government. It is unconscionable that if the rule is allowed to proceed, major protections for the environment, public health, and public funding will cease to exist. There will be no review of the rules that are being dropped and there will not be any notification to the communities involved. This is an affront to democracy and an egregious lack of care for public health and welfare! Funds that Congress has allocated for specific purposes will be reallocated at the discretion of the Secretary of Energy with no public oversight. In the first year alone the proposed rule would: Remove whistleblower protections for contractors working on DOE projects. This means that it would be even more difficult to find out when contractors are skirting required safety and quality guidelines. If these professionals are not protected when they raise concerns about the work that is being completed, inevitably mistakes will be made and covered up, and shortcuts will be taken. Whistleblowers speak up at great risk (both economic and psychological). Whistleblowers have saved many lives across many industries. Such courageous actions require and deserve legal protection, and attempts to remove whistleblower protections is proof that the DOE does not expect its contractors to do things properly — and also is proof that DOE is ok with allowing reallocation of funds designated for legally required cleanup at multiple Superfund sites. Many Superfund sites are already being targeted for new nuclear activities which will further pollute the environment and endanger the health of residents. The health and safety of the workers and communities is of paramount importance! By cancelling the existing legal requirements for cleanup, the government is abandoning its responsibility for both past and future damage. The DOE should not be able to reallocate these funds -- both the cleanup requirements and the funds are legal obligations of the federal government. The most vulnerable in the community, children, elderly and those with chronic illnesses, will be the first to suffer! To get rid of guidelines for siting nuclear waste, even though radioactive waste is forever deadly and dangerous, is not right! There is no place or technology to safely store nuclear waste, and certainly not at an affordable price and with the approval by a majority of local citizens. That's why we MUST stop making more! We actually need stricter guidelines! But eliminating the few guidelines that exist will make it even more difficult for communities, states, and indigenous nations to protect their lands from being turned into nuclear waste dumps. Perhaps that is the DOE's intent, but that doesn't make it legal or morally correct. The government could try to write new legislation concerning the disposal of nuclear waste (this has been attempted many times with no success, because it's an INTRACTABLE problem). What the government should not do is unilaterally eliminate rules at the whim of a few people in a secretive agency. Do away with the definition of an "extraordinary nuclear occurrence" which is the only way victims get any money under the Price-Anderson Act (PAA). PAA already would pay only a fraction of the real costs if a nuclear accident occurs, and it only exists because nuclear accidents cannot be properly insured. However, removing the definition of a triggering event makes PAA even more duplicitous. We are for repealing PAA, but that requires congressional action. If PAA is repealed, every nuclear power plant in the country will shut down because they will not be able to find insurance against the potential financial (let alone environmental and health) consequences of a nuclear meltdown, spent fuel fire, or dry cask breach. DOE-HQ-2025-0603 allows additional rules to expire over the following five years so that by 2032, rules covering almost every part of the DOE's nuclear program would disappear. The exceptions to automatic expiration are rules that the DOE believes would have "a chilling effect" on its ability to sign contractors. This alone is proof that the intent of this rulemaking is to promote new nuclear projects without ANY regard for public safety, existing legislation, or cleanup obligations. It is also further proof that the DOE doesn't trust contractors to do things correctly. This is basically insanity. I incorporate by reference and adopt as my own the comments submitted to docket DOE-HQ-2025-0603 by Lynda Williams for Nuclear Free Hawai’i, nuclearfreehawaii.org (https://www.regulations.gov/comment/DOE-HQ-2025-0603-0012).