Christopher Hanson this week was sworn in for another five-year term at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which he will continue to chair.
“I look forward to building on the successes of recent years as the agency embraces a culture of trust and confidence and as we become even more efficient and effective in applying risk-information in our licensing reviews and decisions,” Hanson said in an NRC press release.
Hanson’s new term expires June 29, 2029.
Hanson’s successful renomination keeps the NRC at four members, one short of its statutory minimum, and maintains an ideological balance of two Democrats and two Republicans on the governing body of the civilian nuclear power and waste regulator. Jeffrey Baran, a former Democratic commissioner, did not make it through his own renomination last year.
Hanson, on the other hand, glided through, quickly winning support from Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who despite asking Hanson some pointed questions at his April renomination hearing in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee said almost immediately that the chairman’s testimony raised no red flags for her.
Capito was the spearhead of the GOP’s opposition to Baran’s renomination in the Senate. Democratic support in the chamber faltered for Baran in the face of universal Republican opposition.
The White House renominated Hanson in March. A former staffer for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who died in 2023, Hanson has been chairman of the NRC since January 2021. He joined the commission in June 2020.
Before working as a Senate staffer, Hanson was a policy advisor in the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy. Before that, he was a consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton. He has master’s degrees from Yale Divinity School and Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, with a focus on ethics and natural resource economics.
