Right-Sizing Nuclear Materials Security

The Breakthrough Institute is engaging extensively as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) implements its ongoing wholesale revision of its regulatory framework following Executive Order 14300. As the agency advances a series of interrelated proposed rules affecting licensing, oversight, and security requirements, BTI has been engaging across these proceedings to support a more coherent, efficient, and durable regulatory system. The proposed modernization of Part 37 physical protection requirements is part of that effort, aimed at reducing regulatory burden for licensees holding risk-significant radioactive material.

BTI supports the burden-reducing intent of the proposed rule and agrees that many of the changes reflect sound, risk-informed judgment that should be finalized as drafted, including removal of the ten-year reinvestigation requirement and the prescriptive maintenance-and-testing program where the underlying performance objectives are preserved.

BTI's principal concern is that the rule treats response coordination as a periodic, bilateral licensee-to-local-law-enforcement requirement rather than as part of a holistic, risk-informed incident response architecture. The current structure rests on assumptions that do not fully reflect how a materials-security incident would unfold: that radiological expertise can be transferred to responders at the moment of need, and that the relevant responder population is limited to the licensee and local police, when in practice fire, EMS, hazmat, and federal partners are routinely involved. The proposed rule reduces the frequency of the existing requirement, but it does not address whether the structure of that requirement is adequate.

Burden reduction is worth pursuing while maintaining the security assurance Part 37 exists to provide.

BTI offers four principal recommendations:

1. Retain the existing annual coordination and training cadence while recognizing federally curated training as a compliant pathway to reduce duplicative burden;

2. Retain the backup communications requirement under a simplified provision;

3. Pair removal of the ten-year reinvestigation requirement with periodic random sampling in the inspection program; and

4. Clarify in the final rule preamble what counts as acceptable operability evidence once the weekly verification and maintenance-and-testing requirements are removed.