NRC Regulations Must Be Credible, Predictable, Timely, and Proportionate to Risk

The central challenge facing nuclear regulation today is an implementation and decision-architecture problem.

Congress has already provided substantial direction to modernize the NRC through legislation, including NEIMA and the ADVANCE Act, and the NRC has begun to make visible progress. But modernization will ultimately be judged by implementation.

Nuclear power contributes simultaneously to reliability, energy security, national security, emissions reduction, air quality improvement, and long-term electricity price stability. Reliable and affordable electricity underpins advanced manufacturing, defense readiness, artificial intelligence infrastructure, industrial production, and economic competitiveness.

Nuclear deployment exists in an ecosystem. Nuclear projects must simultaneously satisfy financing requirements, customer demand, supply-chain readiness, public acceptance, permitting systems, environmental review, and regulatory approval. Any monocausal explanation of nuclear cost or delay is incomplete.

The first implementation challenge is decision-making that truly considers benefits to society. The NRC must maximize benefits to society in every decision, aligning with the Atomic Energy Act (AEA) and ensuring that regulatory processes consider the consequences of delay, foregone infrastructure, energy insecurity, and continued dependence on higher-risk or more polluting alternatives.

The second is the predictability and governance of Commission decisions. NRC staff can only implement reform effectively if the Commission is held accountable to timely votes, clear direction, and stable decision criteria.

The third challenge is radiation protection coherence. Radiation protection should be treated as a system-level issue rather than merely as a subset of NRC reform. Current federal radiation standards are fragmented across different agencies, producing inconsistent standards and practices disconnected from actual risk.

Environmental review and fuel facility licensing face similar challenges. The NRC has begun moving toward more risk-informed and right-sized environmental review, but that is not yet the default. Fuel-cycle facilities, especially enrichment ones, need a streamlined licensing process to meet projected fuel demand.

This Committee is currently evaluating a trio of bills that were introduced to help address parts of these implementation challenges. All of them work to enable smarter, risk-informed, and performance-based regulation: reducing costs associated with nuclear-grade concrete and steel without compromising public health and safety, enabling appropriate environmental review at brownfield sites, and reforming regulatory barriers to enrichment facility licensing.

Ultimately, successful NRC modernization will be measured by whether the United States has created a regulatory system capable of enabling the safe deployment of nuclear technology at the scale required for the nation’s future.