By Steven P. Nesbit –<\/p>\n\n\n\n
June 16, 2025 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Established in 1974 as the regulator of radioactive material use in the United States, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has been criticized for being an overly conservative, inefficient agency holding back the expansion of nuclear power. At the same time, the status of the NRC and other so-called independent federal government agencies is evolving under the new administration. The NRC is experiencing as much turbulence and change as it has at any time in its history, and the NRC that comes out the other end will have a major impact on the country\u2019s nuclear future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since its inception, the NRC has been led by a five-member Commission, with the members nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate to serve for five year terms. No more than three members can be from any one political party. The NRC staff has about 3000 people who carry out the daily work of the agency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Criticism of the NRC after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 led the agency to become much more active and intrusive in its regulation of nuclear power plants. In the 1980s, the NRC was well funded (primarily through user fees on nuclear power reactor plants) and had a large staff, its own research office, and a reputation for working thoroughly to ensure the safety of the enterprises it oversaw. The NRC took pride in its status as \u201cthe Gold Standard\u201d among nuclear regulators. However, among the entities subject to NRC regulation, many considered the agency slow, inflexible, inefficient, and too prone to delay and inaction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Congressional leaders put pressure on the NRC in the 1990s to improve its operations and reform burdensome practices. This led to a number of improvements, including the development of a new Reactor Oversight Program and beginning to incorporate risk insights in regulatory practices. In the 2000s the NRC hired many new employees to handle an anticipated \u201cNuclear Renaissance\u201d of new nuclear power plants that never materialized. In the 2010s most nuclear power plant operators lost interest in new nuclear plants and instead focused on reducing operating costs at existing facilities. This priority was driven by the difficulty competing with low cost natural gas generation and heavily subsidized wind and solar power, particularly in deregulated wholesale power markets. Many in industry felt the NRC contributed to higher-than-necessary nuclear power costs, both through user fees to pay for what was perceived as an excessive number of NRC employees, and by requiring industry to spend resources in areas with little safety benefit. The decade saw significant attrition in NRC employment, down from the \u201cNuclear Renaissance\u201d peak of more than 4000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Interest in a new generation of nuclear power plants rekindled in the late 2010s. Groups that were previously ambivalent toward nuclear power (or even opposed to it) began to see the benefits of dispatchable, reliable, low carbon nuclear power. Climate-focused nongovernmental organizations advocated measures that would enable an expansion of nuclear energy, including regulatory reform. Congress put pressure on the NRC to improve its regulatory framework, with a focus on deploying significant numbers of small modular reactors and advanced reactors with passive safety features. Those reactors were seen by their advocates as preferable to large light water reactors (LWRs) due to greater reliance on passive safety features, lower (theoretical) capital cost, shorter (theoretical) construction time, and design characteristics that would allow nuclear energy to displace carbon-intensive energy sources in applications other than electricity production. Whether justified or not, some reactor developers, investors, and other parties pointed to the NRC as being an impediment (sometimes THE impediment) to progress, because its regulations and practices were geared toward large LWRs, and the process of getting an operating license for a new nuclear power plant was perceived as lengthy and uncertainty. Congress pressured the NRC to carry out its regulatory mission more efficiently – the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act of 2019 (NEIMA) and the Accelerating Deployment 0f Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act of 2024 are examples of such congressional action. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today\u2019s NRC faces many challenges. Based on survey data, for much of its existence the NRC ranked highly (sometimes first) among federal organizations of its size as a desirable place to work. Now, the NRC ranks 13 th out of 22 midsize federal agencies in 2024 and many experienced employees have departed for various reasons (e.g., the curtailment of remote work which was seen as a valuable benefit by many NRC employees). Demands on the agency are substantial, including the oversight of 94 operating nuclear plants, return to operation of two more, license renewal applications from many reactors, regulation of material licensees such as fuel cycle facilities, and medical applications. In addition, the NRC is interacting extensively with prospective new advanced reactor licensees, with several applications already under review. Most of these applications involve new approaches and technologies that lack recent licensing precedents and have relatively little operating experience, making the safety review more challenging. Furthermore, the NRC is actively engaged in developing a technology-inclusive, riskinformed, performance-based regulatory framework intended to enable more efficient licensing of advanced nuclear plants. Putting such a framework in place is challenging and it involves an additional investment of agency resources. Reflective of the goal of changing the NRC culture, pursuant to the ADVANCE Act the NRC recently revised its Mission Statement. While continuing to acknowledge the primary mission as protection of public health and safety, the revised statement now highlights the importance of efficient and reliable regulation of nuclear energy technologies and radioactive materials to advance the nation\u2019s common defense and security. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On May 23, 2025 the Trump Administration issued four executive orders related to nuclear technology, including one entitled \u201cOrdering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.\u201d The order makes it clear the administration views that the NRC is an impediment to expansion of nuclear power. The opening section of the order included the following indictment: \u201cInstead of efficiently promoting safe, abundant nuclear energy, the NRC has instead tried to insulate Americans from the most remote risks without appropriate regard for the severe domestic and geopolitical costs of such risk aversion.\u201d The order itself contains numerous elements, summarized below. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is not the purpose of this paper to assess the merit of the various elements in the order, but to point out that there are many and most of them will not be easy to accomplish. While instituting these reforms, the NRC must continue to perform its baseline functions in a manner that maintains, per the order, \u201c\u2026 the United States\u2019 leading reputation for nuclear safety.\u201d As the saying goes, the NRC must make major repairs to an airplane while that plane flies through the air. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Historically, the NRC has not been an agency known for rapid transformational change. Congress made a deliberate decision in 1974 to put a five member commission instead of a single administrator in charge of the NRC. Presumably, a deliberative, cooperative NRC leadership was desired, rather than the greater responsiveness of an agency led by a single person. Because of the need to garner the support of a majority of commissioners for changes, the NRC has a great deal of institutional inertia. With the exception of some commissioners who are U.S. Navy veterans, most have brought backgrounds in policy or regulatory decisions rather than experience managing large organizations. While the deliberate culture of the NRC originates at the top, the same culture permeates the NRC staff. Many of those who do the day-to-day work are capable and hard-working employees. However, they are also career federal civil servants charged with safety oversight and have generally felt their jobs to be quite secure. While pressure to perform work in a timely manner has increased in past years, the prevailing staff view has traditionally been that meeting schedules should take a back seat to thorough evaluation and comprehensive documentation of safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another characteristic of the NRC as an agency is that it provides copious opportunities for the public to participate in its processes. Public involvement is necessary and appropriate for government agencies that work on behalf of the people, but it can be taken to extremes. The need for repetitive public engagements on agency actions has made NRC processes like rulemaking excessively burdensome and extremely untimely. Examples of this are ample, and two particularly egregious ones are cited below. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
To comply with the \u201cReforming the NRC\u201d executive order, the NRC (staff and commission) will have to carry out extensive rulemaking, revisions to regulatory guidance documents, and other agency actions in time frames that history suggests are unachievable. Greatly improved efficiency and productivity will be needed to accomplish the \u201cReforming the NRC\u201d goals, but the path to achieving that efficiency with is not apparent and it is not spelled out in the executive order. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The NRC has traditionally carried out its mission with little oversight from the White House. This is often cited as a positive attribute and a characteristic of a nuclear safety regulator with the independence necessary to carry out the mission of protecting public health and safety. However, left to its own devices and using the current Commission structure, it is difficult to see how a resource-strapped NRC will be able to address the \u201cReforming the NRC\u201d executive order on anything resembling a reasonable schedule. NRC\u2019s status as an independent federal agency will likely come to the fore. The current administration is expected to deal with the NRC and similar agencies with a much more \u201chands on\u201d approach. The more \u201chelp\u201d the NRC gets from the White House, the more problematic it will be seen by those within and without the agency who view NRC independence as indispensable to the job of credible safety oversight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The NRC is now challenged to expend fewer resources while drastically changing its way of doing business and maintaining its level of safety oversight. Unfortunately, rapid transformational change runs counter to the ingrained agency culture of fifty years. Many will praise the administration\u2019s executive order for highlighting the need for the NRC to innovate, adapt, and become more efficient. However, the path forward to reform is far from clear; and goals, however laudable, without means of achievement ring hollow. Ross Perot once said, \u201cThe activist is not the person who says the river is dirty. The activist is the person who cleans up the river.\u201d The administration says the NRC river is dirty – will the administration take substantive actions to clean it up? If it does, how will those actions impact the NRC\u2019s reputation and effectiveness as a transparent, objective overseer of public health and safety?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
* * * * * The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not represent the views of any other organization or any government. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Steve Nesbit<\/strong> was President of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) between June 2021 and June 2022 and is a Fellow of ANS. He founded LMNT Consulting in 2019 following a distinguished career with Duke Energy Corporation. LMNT Consulting supports clients on matters related to the nuclear fuel cycle, advanced nuclear energy systems, and nuclear nonproliferation. Steve\u2019s career at Duke Energy began in 1982 performing safety analyses in support of nuclear power plants. Between 1996 and 2005, he led Duke Energy\u2019s efforts related to the use of mixed oxide (MOX) fuel in its nuclear power reactors as a part of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) project to dispose of surplus plutonium from nuclear weapons. He also managed used nuclear fuel activities for Duke Energy. For nine years prior to retirement from Duke Energy, he was responsible for developing the company\u2019s policy positions related to nuclear power, and interacting with industry and government groups on used fuel management and related issues. In addition to nuclear utility activities, during his career Steve worked on several DOE projects including the New Production Reactor Project, the Yucca Mountain Spent Nuclear Fuel Disposal Project, and the Centralized Interim Storage Facility Project. He supported the U.S. Department of State on outreach to countries with developing nuclear power programs. He also served on the International Panel of Experts for the Nuclear Threat Initiative\u2019s 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2023 Nuclear Security Index reports. He testified on spent fuel policy issues to the House Energy and Commerce Committee in 2017 and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in 2019. Steve received Bachelor of Science and Master of Engineering degrees in nuclear engineering from the University of Virginia. He is a registered professional engineer in North Carolina. He is a past adjunct faculty member at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he taught nuclear engineering. By Steven P. Nesbit – June 16, 2025 Established in 1974 as the regulator of radioactive material use in the United States, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has been criticized […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7176,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58,60,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-backgroundersanalysis","category-expert-brief","category-publicationsmultimedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegabi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegabi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegabi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegabi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegabi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6626"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thegabi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7675,"href":"https:\/\/thegabi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6626\/revisions\/7675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegabi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegabi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegabi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegabi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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