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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.
John Bistline, Revis James, Andrew Sowder (EPRI)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 981-987
This analysis investigates the conditions under which nuclear power could play a role in future markets. This study uses EPRI’s U.S. Regional Economy, Greenhouse Gas, and Energy (US-REGEN) energy-economic model to explore tradeoffs across a range of assumptions about technologies, markets, and policies. Model results suggest that advanced nuclear could be economically competitive across a range of scenarios and that there are several key drivers that may influence deployment, including energy and environmental policies (e.g., emissions pricing), additional revenue streams (e.g., process heat sales), region-specific factors (e.g., policies, existing asset mixes, transmission), and advanced nuclear capital costs. Market opportunities depend on a combination of these factors, which impact the competitiveness of nuclear relative to other electric sector resources and require modeling to evaluate. Without new policies, extensive deployment of nuclear would require innovation either in technologies to significantly lower costs or in business models to provide supplemental revenue streams. With policies targeting emissions reductions, the presence of technologies like advanced nuclear can reduce compliance costs. However, simultaneous cost reductions for other generation options, especially dispatchable low-carbon technologies, will challenge advanced nuclear for competitive advantage and market share.