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2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
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The transformation of the NRC: 50 years of commissioners
The dust is beginning to settle following the whirlwind of changes at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over the past year, and 2025 ultimately may be viewed as a transformative year, as well as the year the NRC celebrated its golden anniversary. The 12 months of that milestone year brought more change to the agency in its composition, its mandate, and its relationship to the executive branch than any comparable period in the preceding four decades.
Now at 51 years and counting, the NRC is working with a full commission and issuing new rulemakings to both regulate and support the next round of nuclear deployments. With the turbulence of 2025 still fresh in our minds, Nuclear News decided it was a good time to revisit the professional backgrounds of all 42 NRC commissioners who have served over the agency’s 50-year history to see how the composition of the commission has evolved over time.
Yoshiro Nishioka, Satoru Kuboya, Yuya Takahashi, Hideki Horie, Mika Tahara (Toshiba Energy Systems & Solutions Corp), Tadashi Fujii (Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy, Ltd), Takafumi Tsuji (Chubu Electric Power Co., Inc.)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 223-228
The passive debris cooling system provides a means to stably hold and cool the molten core (debris) dropped from the reactor vessel by the heat resistant material laid on the bottom of the containment vessel. As a heat resistant material, high melting point and highly corrosion-resistant oxide is laid on the pedestal and water is injected afterwards to suppress MCCI by the molten core. In the past research, although knowledge about molten core and concrete has been acquired, knowledge about interaction between molten core and heat resistant material is insufficient. Therefore, element tests on heat resistant materials were conducted, various heat resistant materials were screened, and molten core - heat resistant material interaction model was constructed using the obtained findings. Using the constructed model, we evaluated the erosion / heat transfer behavior of the heat resistant material assuming the bottom of the BWR / Mark - II type containment vessel at the time of severe accident and confirmed the MCCI suppression effect by the passive debris cooling system.