The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, aka the NRC, is an independent agency that was created to license and regulate civilian use of nuclear energy to protect public health, safety, and the environment. They’re crucial in making sure reactors are being built and operated safely.
Want to learn more about what is going on with the NRC? We’re asking the expert, Doug True, NEI’s Senior Vice President and Chief Nuclear Officer.
This video was recorded January 14, 2025.
For nuclear energy, the main regulator is the National Regulatory Commission. What is the status with the NRC?
Well, it was first started with the NRC as an entity. They started regulating back in the 1970s. And for 40 years, pretty much regulated a static industry, same technologies, same facilities. And in the last five years, there's been a lot of change. Nuclear’s situation has changed incredibly. The demand for nuclear, public support for nuclear, policy support for nuclear, all of those have changed in a very short period of time.
So, NRC is in the middle of an adaptation. They're making progress. They've made some improvements. We've seen some rapid, very rapid, reviews of particularly the Kairos Hermes reactor and subsequent Hermes two reactor that are, you know, kind of unprecedented in nuclear terms. But there's a lot more work to be done. What's important, though, is we keep the NRC as that singular regulator, because they're so important to how we're giving public confidence that nuclear is safe.
And they play a really important role globally in setting standards that we want to see across the world. They're making progress, but there's still a lot to do.
Why does the NRC need to do more?
Well, it really comes down to the demand for nuclear. You know, over the last several years we've seen a lot of interest in nuclear, primarily plans for retiring coal plants and reducing emissions. But compounded on top of that is the reshoring of manufacturing and demand for tech companies. That has totally changed the landscape for electricity.
They want reliable electricity and they want clean electricity. That's exactly what nuclear provides. We recently tallied up the interest that tech companies have for nuclear and providing reliable energy to their data centers and hyperscalers and that total is 23GW, which itself is about 25% of our existing nuclear capacity. So obviously, we're talking about a significant expansion of nuclear just to support those needs.
On top of that, we have, electrification and a lot of new manufacturing coming back to the United States. All are demanding, reliable 24/7 electricity that nuclear provides. And our members, we just surveyed them, they're very interested in moving forward soon on siting of new reactors and building new reactors, to the tune of about ten different projects in the next five years, total of 100GW of new capacity being part of what they're seeing in their future.
And those tech companies and the utilities don't even count the interest from chemical companies, oil and gas companies, who are looking at nuclear as a source of process heat or high temperature steam to support their processing facilities. So, there's just this burgeoning demand that's growing so fast for nuclear that there is no choice but to be moving in an efficient direction, to be able to get that deployed.
How does the NRC ensure safety but become more efficient?
First of all, there are safety regulators, so that has to be first. But there's a lot of opportunity to become more efficient. And it really is going to take improvements in four areas. First is with processes. Those processes grew out of that industry that was pretty much static for 40 years. They didn't value efficiency. There wasn't a need for great efficiency because nothing was changing. But in this period we're in where all this change ahead of us, it's important to revamp us, modernize those processes. It's kind of a low hanging fruit because it doesn't change anything about what they're doing. It's just how they do it in a more efficient and effective manner.
The second area is to right-size the regulations. The regulations that we have today were really set up for the large light water reactors of the old style that we built in the 60s and 70s and 80s, and not the new innovative designs that have inherent safety features that just make them much simpler and more straightforward to operate and regulate. And thus, we need to look at how we right-size that regulation.
The third area is the NRC internally, just needs to do a little bit better on project management, on having metrics they follow on how they're doing to deliver on what they said they're going to do, and being transparent about that so that the public and the industry understand the progress that's being made.
And the last area involves leadership. In order to make an agency like that of several thousand employees change, it's going to take leadership from the top, and they're going to have to work through the organization to see those changes implemented. It's going to take some time. But they don't have a lot of time. It's going to take real leadership to make that happen at a pace that really supports the demand that's coming at them.
How can this happen?
Well, there's a lot to do. But what I think is important is that Congress and the administration can play a role in this. And as an independent agency, the NRC does what it needs to do to support safety of nuclear plants. But oversight by the administration, and particularly Congress, is really key.
Last year, Congress passed a law called the ADVANCE Act that was focused on modernization of the NRC. It's laid out a number of areas that Congress felt NRC need to become more efficient in. Congress, as the oversight entity, will be able to see what the NRC is proposing. What's really important is that Congress holds them accountable, not just to deliver the reports they've requested, but to the real progress that would come out of implementing the changes that can be made in these areas.
So, Congress overseeing the NRC, seeing that the ADVANCE Act and the intent for the ADVANCE Act is being pursued and implemented, and we're seeing real results, is really where this is going to happen. The administration has its role in addition to supporting Congress, but in setting out expectations for the NRC. Also, in setting some leadership roles at the NRC, and those are going to be important to follow through and see that that actually gets implemented.
There's a lot of opportunity. And with the right oversight from Congress and support from the administration, a lot can be accomplished. I just want to leave kind of a punctuation point on this. Right now, in China, they're building over 20 reactors for commercial use. In the United States, we're building zero. Now is the time for us to come back to the table to establish that leadership internationally.
And the NRC being able to move forward quickly is going to be key to making that happen.
