UWC 2022 speaker

Robert Taylor

Deputy Office Director for New Reactors

Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation (NRR)

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)

Robert Taylor is currently the Deputy Office Director for New Reactors in the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation (NRR) at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Mr. Taylor leads highly skilled engineers, scientists, inspectors, and project managers in executing the agency’s mission on a large number of nationally significant projects, ensuring that his office enables the safe use of nuclear technology, while protecting public health and safety, promoting the common defense and security, and protecting the environment. He has lead responsibility for the NRC’s preparations for review of the next generation of advanced nuclear reactor designs, licensing first-of-a-kind new small modular nuclear reactors, relicensing of the nation’s operating nuclear power plants (NPPs), licensing new medical isotope production facilities to meet the nation’s need for a stable supply to support diagnostic and therapeutic patient treatments, oversight and licensing of the nation’s 31 operating research and test reactors, and resolving material safety issues at nuclear power plants.

Prior to his current assignment, he was the Director of the Division of Licensing, Siting, and Environmental Analysis in NRC’s Office of New Reactors (NRO), where he led the agency’s licensing and oversight activities of a new NPP construction project through the first implementation of an enhanced regulatory process for new reactors, siting assessments and approvals for new and advanced reactor designs, and implementation of a new federal law as the agency’s lead federal environmental permitting officer for all agency projects. Mr. Taylor joined the NRC in 2001 as a reactor engineer. Since joining the NRC, he has held positions of increasing responsibility including: Chief, Accident Dose Branch; Chief, Steam Generator Tube Integrity and Chemical Engineering Branch; and Deputy Director, Japan Lessons-Learned Project Directorate. In addition to the above, since joining the Senior Executive Service in 2014, he held the senior management positions of Deputy Director, Division of Safety Systems, NRR; and Director, Division of Site Safety and Environmental Analysis, NRO.