The American Nuclear Society’s Risk-informed, Performance-based Principles and Policy Committee (RP3C) has held another presentation in its monthly Community of Practice (CoP) series. Former RP3C chair N. Prasad Kadambi opened the meeting with brief introductory remarks about the RP3C and the need for new approaches to nuclear design that go beyond conventional and deterministic methods. He then welcomed this month’s speaker: Kent Welter, a member of the ANS Standards Board and chief engineer of testing and analysis at NuScale, who presented “RIPB Design and Licensing of the NuScale US460 Small Modular Reactor.”

Watch the full webinar here.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy will hold a webinar on August 27 from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. (EDT) to discuss commercial-scale facility and transportation criticality analyses for the high-assay low-enriched uranium fuel cycle.

Those interested in attending the workshop can register using this link.

Holtec International has submitted a license termination plan (LTP) for Oyster Creek nuclear power plant to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a milestone in the decommissioning of the boiling water reactor, which operated from 1969 to 2018. Holtec took over Oyster Creek’s license from Exelon Generation in 2019 for the immediate decommissioning of the plant, located in Forked River, N.J.

As work progresses on the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program, which will progress through DOE authorization rather than Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing, three members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce have sent a critical letter to Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

The letter demands “information about the DOE and its employees’ dealings with the NRC and its staff” and expresses concern that DOE staff has “broken the firewall” between the departments.

...and today.

Levin in the late 1980s...

Growing up in Baltimore in the 1950s and ’60s, I had interests in two areas that ultimately had major impacts on my education and career. The first was science—especially nuclear physics—and the second was science fiction.

One early influence was undoubtedly Disney’s short film “Our Friend the Atom.” I don’t recall exactly when or where I saw it, but I clearly remember the demonstration of a chain reaction with mousetraps and ping pong balls. It looked like an exciting area about which to learn.

I also had a shelf full of Tom Swift Jr. sci-fi/adventure books, and around the fourth grade I discovered Robert Heinlein—specifically, his book Have Space Suit, Will Travel. Kip Russell, the teenage hero of the book, is abducted by hostile space aliens but manages to escape and, with the help of a friendly alien, saves Earth from destruction. At the end, having returned to Earth, Kip prepares to go off to college at MIT. With the assistance of my trusty World Book Encyclopedia, I researched MIT and decided—rather audaciously at the age of 10—that I would go there, too.

Nieh

President Trump recently nominated Ho Nieh for the role of commissioner at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission through the remainder of a term that will expire June 30, 2029.

Nieh has been the vice president of regulatory affairs at Southern Nuclear since 2021, though he is currently working as a loaned executive at the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, where he has been for more than a year.

Nieh’s experience: Nieh started his career at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, where he worked primarily as a nuclear plant engineer and contributed as a civilian instructor in the U.S. Navy’s Nuclear Power Program.

From there, he joined the NRC in 1997 as a project engineer. In more than 19 years of service at the organization, he served in a variety of key leadership roles, including division director of Reactor Projects, division director of Inspection and Regional Support, and director of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.

Caputo

Commissioner Annie Caputo is resigning from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, according to a statement sent out to staff on Tuesday morning. Her resignation comes one day after the U.S. Senate voted to reconfirm chair David Wright to the commission.

“The time has come for me to more fully focus on my family,” Caputo said in her statement, provided by NRC spokesperson Scott Burnell. “I believe the [Trump] administration’s recent executive orders and the bipartisan ADVANCE Act have given the agency a platform for change.”

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has made three recent announcements regarding new developments in the nuclear energy industry:

The Palisades nuclear power plant has been formally transitioned from decommissioning status to holding an operating license following the completion of an extensive technical review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It’s a historic move; before this, no U.S. nuclear plant had ever made the transition from shut down to approved for restart.

Less than a week after news broke of the U.S. entering into civil nuclear talks with Malaysia, the U.S. State Department announced that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Bahrain’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani have also signed a memorandum of understanding concerning civil nuclear cooperation.

The Department of Energy has announced a program to accelerate nuclear fuel fabrication for new test reactors. The Fuel Line Pilot Program would see the DOE approve facilities developed by U.S. companies to produce the fuel needed for test reactors the DOE expects to authorize under the Reactor Pilot Program announced in June. Like the reactors they’re meant to fuel, the fabrication facilities would be built on sites outside the DOE’s national laboratories but authorized by the DOE under “a fast-tracked approach to enable future commercial licensing activities for potential applicants.”

The Idaho National Laboratory has announced that it will collaborate with Microsoft on the use of artificial intelligence technologies to streamline the nuclear permitting and licensing application process. Using Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform, INL will generate the engineering and safety analysis reports that are required to be submitted for construction permits and operating licenses for nuclear power plants.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which currently has three serving commissioners and—according to recent media reports—a detailee from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is accelerating licensing timelines to meet the requirements of President Trump’s May 23 Executive Order 14300, “Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” and the ADVANCE Act. On top of that, the agency is preparing for an anticipated rush of applications while dealing with a reduced workforce.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has accepted for review the Tennessee Valley Authority’s construction permit application for a BWRX-300 small modular reactor at its Clinch River site in Tennessee. The NRC expects to complete its review by December 2026.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering allowing Entergy to use a portion of the decommissioning trust fund (DTF) for the Arkansas Nuclear One nuclear power plant to dispose of several major radioactive components (MRC) that have been taken out of service at the two-unit pressurized water reactor.

Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

So, President Trump has just kicked the low-dose radiation hornets’ nest.

Specifically, his recently signed executive order “Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission” calls for the NRC to “reconsider reliance” on the linear no-threshold (LNT) theory and the ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) standard for radiation protection.

This directive will certainly reignite a vociferous debate within the radiation research community over the continued efficacy of using LNT as the basis for protecting the public and the environment, a community that has been wracked with controversy on this matter for the last few years.

I must admit that whenever the low-dose issue comes up, my first thoughts always go to Sayre’s Law.

Texas-based Vistra Corporation has announced that its license renewal application for the Perry nuclear power plant was approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The plant first connected to the grid in 1986 and is still operating under its original 40-year license, which was set to expire next year.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has whittled down the timeline for reviewing TerraPower’s construction permit application for Kemmerer Power Station Unit 1 in Wyoming. Announcing a new, more aggressive schedule, the NRC said it aims to complete its review by the end of 2025, eight months earlier than originally planned.

Global Laser Enrichment announced that it has submitted its safety analysis report to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the planned Paducah Laser Enrichment Facility (PLEF). This follows GLE’s December 2024 submission of the plant’s environmental report, now completing GLE’s full license application for NRC review.

Dominion Energy’s V.C. Summer nuclear power plant, in Jenkinsville, S.C., has been authorized to operate for 80 years, until August 2062, following the renewal of its operating license by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a second time.