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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.
Corey Misenheimer, Konor Frick, Stephen Terry, J. Michael Doster (NCSU), Shannon M. Bragg-Sitton (INL)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 431-440
Power maneuvers stemming from time-varying loads imposed on nuclear reactors from diurnal changes in demand and renewable intermittency can be detrimental to the life of the reactor. Temperature swings during power maneuvers result in thermal and mechanical stresses in fuel elements and other reactor components. Thermal Energy Storage (TES) reservoirs can be coupled to reactors to absorb these grid instabilities. Previous work has shown chilled-water storage can help shift cooling loads that contribute to the daily peak electric demand from on-peak to off-peak hours. The objective of this work is to evaluate a stratified chilled-water storage tank as a potential TES reservoir for a Small Modular Reactor (SMR) using absorption chillers for chilled-water production. Simulation results reveal absorption chiller performance is hindered when receiving steam from a tap on the low-pressure turbine. A better configuration involves integrating the absorption chillers into a flash vessel system that is thermally coupled to a sensible heat storage system. The sensible heat storage system maintains reactor thermal output at 100% and matches turbine output with demand while producing enough steam to power four large absorption chillers to charge a stratified chilled-water storage tank, which is used to offset cooling loads in an adjacent facility.