Regulators Grapple With Meeting Nuclear’s ‘Now or Never’ Moment

US nuclear regulators are facing thorny questions around licensing, staffing, and public outreach as they prepare for a long-promised nuclear renaissance that has failed to materialize in the past.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, based in Rockville, Md., is poised to play an outsize role in shaping the trajectory of that renaissance—should it happen. The commission, with nearly 3,000 employees and an annual budget of nearly $1 billion, is tasked with licensing and overseeing reactor safety.

The nuclear industry says technology has progressed to build smaller reactors, and bipartisan political support is coalescing around extending the life of the country’s existing fleet of 93 operating reactors.

The industry presently faces a “now or never” moment because policies and political support have never before been so favorably aligned for nuclear to succeed, Bradley Crowell, a Democrat who joined the commission last year, said in a recent interview. Climate advocates and grid experts point to nuclear power’s ability to provide round-the-clock, carbon-free electricity to the power grid.

But the NRC must make changes to ensure it’s not the “long pole in the tent” for developers, Crowell said. The commission is confronting a wave of retirements, internal silos that limit knowledge sharing among staff, and skeptical communities that could push back on advanced nuclear reactors if the NRC doesn’t improve outreach, he said.

“This agency can’t continue to do things the way it was done in the past and on the timelines it was done in the past,” Crowell said. “There need to be institutional and cultural changes at the NRC that happen quickly in order to have the NRC to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.”

Still Quiet

The NRC has responded to a promised nuclear renaissance before and didn’t see the applications to match.

In the 2000s, the NRC staffed up as the industry signaled it would build more reactors. But a flood of cheaper natural gas prices, falling costs of renewable energy, and construction delays undercut that plan. By 2015, the NRC told Congress the “workload has not materialized as anticipated,” requiring a downsizing of the workforce.

“And now we’re at another inflection point,” said Doug True, the Nuclear Energy Institute’s senior vice president and chief nuclear officer. “And they’re like: Well, prove to me this is really going to happen before I go through that cycle all over again,” he said, speaking of the NRC.

The commission must be mindful of its budget, which is funded by taxpayers and license fees on existing reactor operators, said Annie Caputo, a Republican who served on the commission from 2018 to 2021 and rejoined the commission with Crowell last year.

Advanced reactor vendors are making a splash, but the NRC hasn’t yet seen a clear demand signal from electric utilities, Caputo said.

“I’m expecting that there will be signs before we see a tranche coming in, and there aren’t a lot of those signs percolating right now,” Caputo said.

Electric utilities may ultimately buy into nuclear as a solution to meet growing power demand and to fill the gap left by the closure of coal plants, Caputo said, but “things are still kind of quiet.”

Renaissance 2.0

The nuclear industry and its supporters argue this time is different.

New reactor designs have momentum thanks to the Energy Department’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, which provides opportunities to decarbonize heavy industry and replace coal-fired power, and the fall of nuclear bans in once-hostile states. There’s also congressional support to secure fuel supplies and subsidize struggling reactors. Nuclear plants generate almost a fifth of US electricity and nearly half of its zero-carbon power.

In August, Vogtle Unit 3, the first US nuclear unit built in more than 30 years, started commercial operation. That month, Pew Research Center reported 57% of Americans say they favor more nuclear power plants to generate electricity in the country, up from 43% in 2020. Respondents still favored additional solar power (82%) and wind power (75%), according to the survey.

The NRC has faced intensifying scrutiny from lawmakers to prepare for license applications.

In 2018, Congress required the commission to create a new licensing pathway for advanced reactors that use different technologies and designs. The current licensing process was designed decades ago for the existing fleet of larger reactors, resulting in a cumbersome process of issuing exemptions for the new technology.

At the same time, more than 90% of the existing fleet was looking to extend their reactors’ operating life from 60 years to at least 80 years, according to a survey this year by the NEI, a trade association promoting the nuclear industry. More than half of surveyed sites are exploring increasing power production levels.

Historically, “there hasn’t been as much of a need to get much done as quickly,” said Adam Stein, director of the Nuclear Energy Innovation program at the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental think tank. “But now NRC is undergoing a transformation along with the nuclear industry, and that needs a little bit more swift attention and urgency.”

The NRC is in the midst of several other short-term advanced reactor actions, including a generic environmental impact statement, population-related siting considerations, and a policy statement setting review timelines and staff focus, Third Way detailed in a memo published this week.

The staffing situation at the NRC is “near-dire,” said Ryan Norman, a senior policy adviser for the Climate and Energy Program at Third Way, a centrist research organization. “If there’s a single issue that jeopardizes broad-scale deployment of advanced reactors that keeps me up at night, that’s in contention for number one.”

Better Outreach, Metrics

NRC Chair Christopher Hanson, a Democrat, has acknowledged the commission needs to do better in recruiting and retaining skilled workers. The NRC set a goal of hiring 400 people during the fiscal year ending Sept. 30. It hired 279 people through mid-September, the commission said. The commission lost about 250 through attrition the previous year, Hanson has told Congress.

Meanwhile, one seat on the five-member commission is in limbo. In June, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee didn’t advance the renomination of Jeff Baran, a Democrat, with Republicans and advanced nuclear supporters arguing Baran was hostile to the industry. Baran’s term ended at the end of June, leaving the commission split 2-2 between the political parties.

Even with more staff, the NRC must improve how employees conduct public outreach to communities that don’t understand nuclear or how reactors work, Crowell said.

Crowell, who previously led the Nevada Bureau of Minerals, oversaw critical mineral mining projects that could’ve been contentious without the state mediating discussions about minimizing environmental and community impacts, he said.

“You have to meet people at their level and talk to people in ways they can understand,” Crowell said, adding he would be open to creating a new office to promote public participation. “I’m trying to hold onto that and impress on the entire agency and my fellow commissioners the importance of talking in plain language, because if you’re talking past people, you’re sunk.”

Environmental justice recommendations from NRC staff, which include updating the NRC’s 1995 environmental justice strategy and 2004 policy statement, have been sitting at the committee since April 2022. Hanson has told reporters he hopes to see some action on environmental justice by the end of this year.

Caputo said the commission will study the recommendations. She acknowledged a need to remove barriers to public participation, such as making the NRC’s record-keeping system easier to access.

In August, Caputo and Commissioner David Wright, a fellow Republican, called for better performance metrics—in part responding to concerns from Congress and groups like NEI.

“It gives us windows into what we can do better,” Caputo said in the interview, “and it also gives us data to defend against critics.”