Until last week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had a full slate of five commissioners for the first time since 2019.
Now, the civilian nuclear power regulator is down to four after the Senate left town without voting on whether to give Jeffrey Baran, the longest-serving NRC commission, another five years at the agency.
The realm of possibilities is wide, but there is a chance that Baran could boomerang right back into One White Flint North. His renomination, approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in June, remains on the Senate’s executive calendar.
If Baran is still President Joe Biden’s (D) man for the NRC, it’s possible that Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the majority leader, will have to force the entire Senate to the floor for the vote needed to get Baran back to the commission. Schumer could do so after Senators return to Washington from their Independence Day recess on July 10.
Asked whether Baran would like to return to the NRC after his term lapsed on Friday, an NRC spokesperson declined to comment and referred the Exchange Monitor to Baran’s testimony during his May confirmation hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
“Until the full Senate confirms any renomination, a Commissioner whose term has ended lacks authority to continue in that role and surrenders their badge,” the NRC spokesperson said. The commissioner’s personal staff would “continue working in other roles and could resume their Commissioner support functions if a Commissioner returns to the agency after confirmation.”
Some nominees slide through the full Senate on a unanimous consent agreement, also called a hotline, that is negotiated largely behind closed doors. That is the quickest way to get noncontroversial nominees to their posts at executive agencies.
Baran’s nomination, however, has become controversial.
Among Senate Republicans, Baran has earned himself a reputation as a heavy-handed regulator who is intractably resistant to speeding NRC safety reviews.
After a relatively cordial nomination hearing in the Environment and Public Works Committee in May, where Baran answered charges that he was an impediment to a looming nuclear renaissance, committee Republicans voted against him en bloc in June.
The GOP message in the committee, amplified after the nomination hearing in conservative publications, was that Baran appeared open-minded about regulatory reform while before his overseers in the Senate, but that once he had the power to vote for or against reforms desired by pro-nuclear lawmakers in Congress, he would vote against them.
So, Baran squeaked out of the committee on a 10-9 partisan vote and now has another tough assignment on the Senate floor, where Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), two of the more bipartisan-minded votes in the Senate’s Democratic caucus, will both have to vote for Baran if every Republican goes against him.
If they don’t, “[t]he Commission has on many occasions, with fewer than its full five-member makeup, continued to effectively carry out its role leading the NRC,” a commission spokesperson told the Monitor.
