In 2023, Taylor, who dropped out of high school to work in tech, started his own nuclear company, Valar Atomics. But the company says that overly onerous regulations imposed by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the country’s main regulatory body for nuclear reactors, has forced Valar Atomics to develop its test reactor overseas. The NRC has long been criticized for its ultra-slow permitting times, inefficient processes, and contentious back-and-forth with nuclear companies. “The regulatory relationship in the US has been described as legalistic and adversarial for nuclear,” says Nick Touran, a licensed nuclear engineer who runs the website What Is Nuclear. In 1954, Congress passed the Atomic Energy Act, which created modern nuclear regulation in the US.