The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is beyond reach of many of the executive orders President Donald Trump has signed in his early months in office, but the agency will continue to consider the spirit of those directives, NRC Chairwoman Kristine Svinicki said Wednesday.
The White House’s orders include a freeze on all new or proposed federal regulations under consideration in Executive Branch departments and agencies, with exceptions to rules impacting health, safety, financial, or national security matters. The NRC has said it continues to process regulations and guidance documents in accordance with the agency’s independent health and safety mission.
“The agency has been taking a very systematic look at the executive orders as they’ve been issued,” Svinicki said Wednesday, during her appearance at the NRC’s annual Regulatory Information Conference. “As an independent agency in the strictest sense, we are in some ways beyond the reach of the specific measures in some of those orders, but I think as an agency we look also to the spirit and the intent of various executive orders.”
Some of Trump’s orders are intended to shrink federal bureaucracy and what the administration sees as burdensome regulation. One executive order called for a “one-in, two-out” plan that requires federal agencies to designate two regulations to abolish for every new rule approved.
Svinicki said the agency continuously looks to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of NRC regulations. On this matter, the commission has repeatedly pointed to Project AIM, its effort to remove redundant operations and services, and its 2019 decommissioning rulemaking, an attempt to improve and clarify details in the nuclear reactor decommissioning process.
“I think that the NRC has a continuous learning and improvement culture,” she said. “We take that in. It may be in a strict sense that some of the measures are not applicable to our agency, but we can always be looking at the spirit and objective of those matters, and we do.”
Commissioner Jeff Baran said the 2019 rulemaking will allow the regulator to “take a fresh look” at the decommissioning process, particularly concerning local communities’ desire to have greater say in cleanup activities at nearby plants after they close.
Following her presentation, Svinicki was asked about the timeline for filling the five-member commission’s two vacant seats; she said there is yet no definitive schedule. Baran and Stephen Burns, who served as chairman prior to Trump’s appointment of Svinicki, round out the current three-member board. The Obama administration nominated Democrat Jessie Hill Roberson, vice chairman of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, to fill the first vacancy, but the final seat awaits a nomination.
“I think the administration is turning to vacancies at various boards and commissions as effectively and efficiently as they can, so I continue to work forward with an assumption that recommendations and nominations for vacancies are likely in process and in the coming months, I think that we would see that,” Svinicki said.
Burns was asked about recent nuclear power subsidy packages in New York and Illinois, which were intended to ensure the competitiveness of nuclear plants to keep them from closing. The session moderator asked if more weight should be given to state interests, with the suggestion of allowing immediate dismantlement of nuclear plants. That would require eliminating the NRC’s SAFSTOR decommissioning option, which allows the owner to sit on a property for 60 years or until its decommissioning trust fund accumulates enough interest to cover costs of cleaning up the site. Burns said such a decision is outside the scope of the NRC.
“What we have to do is remain on task as far as honest assessment of what we think are the technical risks are and move from there,” Burns said.
