By John Stang
Incumbent David Wright and newcomer Christopher Hanson sailed through a Senate committee hearing Wednesday on their way toward confirmation as members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
In a nomination hearing, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee quizzed Hanson, Wright, and Douglas Benevento, the Trump administration’s candidate for deputy administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency
Panel members overwhelmingly concentrated on Benevento during the roughly 106-minute session.
The NRC nominees were asked about their attitudes toward advanced nuclear reactors. Both replied they are interested in the topic.
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) questioned Wright about the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s implementation of the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act, signed into law in January 2019. Among its measures, the law changed the NRC’s licensing fee structure, including capping fees so functional reactors don’t have to pay more when other reactors shut down.
Wright replied: “The NEIMA implementation, I believe, is going well.” He acknowledged the agency is “challenged in certain areas,” given its annual 5% budget reduction in recent years, in meeting the law’s requirements for limiting corporate support spending. NEIMA requires the NRC, “to the maximum degree practicable,” to reduce the percentage of corporate support within its annual budget request to 30% in fiscal years 2021 and 2022, then down to 29% in 2023 and 28% in 2025 and afterward.
For the upcoming fiscal 2021, the $588 million corporate support request would represent 31% of the agency’s total budget authority. It covers operations such as administrative services, human resources, and informationm technology.
If confirmed, Wright and Hanson would help lead a nearly $900 million-per-year agency tasked with oversight of commercial nuclear power and waste operations. It is the adjudicator for any radioactive waste storage or disposal applications, including the long-frozen Department of Energy repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., and two interim sites planned for Texas and New Mexico.
The nominees did not discuss nuclear waste management in their prepared statements for the committee, and the issue did not come up in questioning.
Hanson was nominated to the commission just last week, while Wright’s nomination for another term has been sitting since January.
“The NRC faces a complex set of challenges in the coming years – overseeing increased plant closures, regulating a current fleet ever more important to clean energy goals, and preparing to license a diverse array of new reactor technologies,” Hanson, a Democratic staffer in the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in his prepared statement for the hearing. “With a deep commitment to public service and a safe nuclear industry, I feel I would be coming full circle with a role at the NRC.”
In his own opening statement, Wright said: “We are preparing for novel technologies while continuing to license existing technologies effectively and reliably. We are working to become a more modern, risk-informed regulator, consistent with direction in the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act and our own Principles of Good Regulation. As the NRC prepares for the future, one thing remains constant: our laser focus on our important safety mission, which is to provide reasonable assurance of adequate protection of the public health and safety.“
Hanlon has since early 2015 been a Democratic staff member on the Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee. His areas of specialty include storage and disposal of spent fuel from nuclear power plants. Before that Hanson spent nearly six years at the Department of Energy, ending with a 14-month stint on detail to the Appropriations Committee.
At DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, Hanson contributed to the January 2013 Strategy for the Management and Disposal of Used Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste.
“He is respected on both sides of the aisle,” Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Hanson’s boss, said in introducing him to the committee.
Nominated on March 2, he would fill out a term on the commission through June 30, 2024, following the retirement on April 30, 2019, of Stephen Burns.
Wright joined the commission in May 2018. He took a seat that had previously been held by Commissioner Jeff Baran and expires on June 30 of this year. Baran, who has served on the commission since 2014, in 2018 himself received a five-year term to the end of June 2023. Wright’s new term would be five years.
Before becoming an NRC commissioner, Wright was an energy and water consultant in South Carolina. He previously held leadership roles on the South Carolina Public Service Commission and the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.
“David has ably served as a commissioner since he took office,” Rep Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) told the committee.
Senators can submit follow-up questions to the nominees through today. The nominees are supposed to reply to those questions by March 19. As of deadline, the committee had not scheduled votes on the nominations.
Benevento had a harder time during the session. A veteran of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and an environmental law attorney, he most recently has been the EPA’s regional administrator for the Rockies and Plains states.
Committee members from both parties criticized the EPA’s sluggishness in responding to congressional requests for information. Sens. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) questioned him about the agency offering mixed signals on whether it will appeal a federal court ruling that the EPA improperly extended exemptions to the Clean Air Act to three small Western oil refineries, which were profitable and did not need such exemptions to stay profitable. Agricultural interests, including the Midwestern ethanol industry, were the plaintiffs.
Benevento said he would get back to the senators on several questions, including the possible refinery-exemption-related appeal and the EPA’s reluctance to provide information to Congress.
