ROCKVILLE, MD. – With the influx of nuclear reactor designs coming down the pipe, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is “ready for the moment” to efficiently and safely license, commissioners David Wright and Bradley Crowell said Tuesday morning.
The two commissioners spoke in their own respective plenaries during the NRC Regulatory Information Conference. Though a lot of work is to come for NRC, staffing still continues to be a point of focus, they discussed in their panels.
Crowell, while he said he is optimistic, said retaining and replenishing NRC staff will be important going forward with producing on the current momentum for nuclear power under President Donald Trump’s administration. Crowell said NRC is still recovering from the staff lost from last year and will lean on NRC division managers to help the Commission navigate incoming staffing regarding the recent reorganization.
The reorganization, which is scheduled to be implemented by September, launched to streamline decision-making in an effort to create more efficient licensing processes. This organization shift was called for by President Trump’s Executive Order 14300.
“But my gut instinct just from the stress level and talking to NRC employees is that we can use more capacity,” Crowell said during the question and answers portion of his plenary.
Crowell said he wants NRC to re-invest into universities to build up its workforce. He applauded the Department of Energy for continuing to put money towards university programs, referring to DOE recently awarding nearly $53 million to various universities and their nuclear research programs.
“The workload before us now and for the future is truly daunting, but we’re up for the task,” Crowell said in his opening statement.
Wright said during his plenary that the NRC workforce has leaned on modernizing its operations while keeping safety at the forefront, the agency’s “Northstar.”
“You [NRC staff] assessed whether systems from a different era are still serving today’s needs, and you did it with confidence and conviction,” Wright said in his opening statement. “You focused on modernizing licensing frameworks to better accommodate advanced technology…you [NRC staff] should take pride in what you accomplished because you energized an agency to achieve some remarkable accomplishments.”
With a critical moment for nuclear power at hand, Wright said NRC is “becoming the place for the cool kids to work at” in the nuclear industry and a place to work at to enable the nuclear future.