In a Tuesday hearing about his nomination to a third term on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Republican Senators painted Commissioner Jeffrey Baran as an impediment to nuclear progress.
However, none of the Republicans who questioned Baran in his Wednesday nomination hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee said they would oppose his nomination.
Democrats have enough of a majority in the Senate that they can advance nominees out of a committee without Republican support, but Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, had not given up on bipartisanship.
“I hope to work with members of this committee to expeditiously move Commissioner Baran through the confirmation process to ensure that this impending vacancy is filled,” Carper said in his opening remarks.
Baran’s term on the NRC expires June 30. If he is not approved by the committee and confirmed by the full Senate before then, the NRC will drop to four members from five. The committee had not scheduled a vote on the nomination as of Wednesday afternoon.
Sen. Shelley Capito (R-W.Va.), the ranking Republican on the committee, was sharply critical of Baran’s record at Wednesday’s hearing but had not as of Wednesday threatened to block his nomination for five more years at NRC.
“Senator Capito has serious concerns but has not made a judgment yet on how she will vote,” a Capito spokesperson wrote in an email to the Exchange Monitor after the hearing.
“As I have reviewed his record from his long tenure as a commissioner, I see a regulatory philosophy of unjustifiably increasing regulatory burdens, and reducing regulatory predictability, and adding costs,” Sen. Shelley Capito (R-W.Va.), the ranking member of the committee. said of Baran in her opening statement. “This record, if continued, will severely curtail the outlook for nuclear energy in our future, cede international markets to Russia and China, and limit the Commission’s ability to deliver upon the vision set out by Congress at the dawn of the nuclear age.”
Similarly, Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said he was concerned that Baran alone among the five-member commission was “the one impediment on the NRC [who is] not the one that’s truly an advocate for advancing, safely, advancing this important technology.”
Senate Democrats have a razor-thin majority in the Senate and require the votes of all three independent senators who caucus with them to advance a nominee by simple majority. With the independents, Democrats have 51 votes. Without even one of them, it’s a deadlock.
The Joe Biden administration officially nominated Baran for another five-year NRC term in April. If reconfirmed, the longtime commissioner’s new term would expire on July 30, 2028.
Baran has served on the NRC since 2014. He holds a juris doctor from Harvard Law School and masters and bachelors degrees in political science from Ohio University. He worked on Capitol Hill prior to joining the commission.
