Unnecessary rules should be eliminated

Unnecessary rules should be eliminated

Commissioners on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission are worried. They see a pending avalanche of license applications for new reactors, fuel production facilities, uranium mines, transportation containers, and waste repositories with an insufficiently sized and trained licensing workforce. They seem to be increasingly aware of their role in enabling a clean energy transition and they want…

Can prototype nuclear reactors be licensed in the US under current rules?

Can prototype nuclear reactors be licensed in the US under current rules?

Designers and developers of nuclear power systems that are substantially different from conventional light water reactors face a conundrum. They are required to provide sufficient information to regulators to allow them to confidently predict how the designs will behave under a comprehensive set of postulated operational and accident conditions. Proving their design is safe is…

Is nuclear reactor licensing process being improved as Congress mandated with NEIMA?

Is nuclear reactor licensing process being improved as Congress mandated with NEIMA?

A panel of five experts and an experienced moderator addressed the progress being made in creating effective processes to license advanced and non-LWR (light water reactors) at an ANS Winter 2022 panel session titled “Licensing the Future: How the NRC is Approaching Advanced Reactors.” Four out of five of the panelists were cautiously positive and…

NuScale announces a major step in the NRC’s review of its passively safe SMR

NuScale, a leader in the increasingly competitive field of advanced nuclear reactor design, has announced that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) reviewers issued a document that formally agrees that their design does not require any electrical power to achieve safe shutdown. It’s difficult to explain the importance of that regulatory position. People with experience…

Using science to update regulatory approach to radiation protection

Excessive regulation of extremely low radiation doses increases the public fears of nuclear technology, increases the costs borne by society, and can deprive society of the full benefit of that technology.” – Edward Maher, Sc.D., Harvard University Note: Borrowed from lowdoserad.org That is a truth that Atomic Insights has recognized for many years, but the…

Spent Fuel Pools Protect The Public. Don’t Believe Skeptics

A two-page Policy Forum opinion piece titled Nuclear safety regulation in the post-Fukushima era: Flawed analyses underlie lax U.S. regulation of spent fuel by Edwin Lyman, Michael Schoeppner and Frank von Hippel appeared in the May 26, 2017 issue of Science Magazine, an outlet that has a public reputation as a reliable source of technical…

Nominations for NRC Commissioners

Yesterday, the President announced his intent to fill two vacancies at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The White House press release names Annie Caputo, currently serving as senior policy advisor for Chairman John Barrasso (R-WY) on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to a seat with a term expiring June 30, 2021. As stated in…

Challenging EPA’s legal authority set strict limits on low dose radiation

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been seeking input on regulations that should be repealed, replaced or modified. The comment window opened on April 13 and closed on May 15. In response to the request, members of Scientists for Accurate Radiation Information (SARI) prepared a document containing scientifically supported arguments for eliminating regulations that contain…

Shown are about 1/2 of the NRC staff members who were sworn in as potential witnesses during the North Anna Unit 3 COL hearing. Chairman Svinicki is administering the oath.

New Nuclear: North Anna Unit 3 Should Be Approved Before The End Of May

Dominion Resources’s North Anna nuclear power station unit number 3 should be approved for construction by the end of May 2017. It’s possible that the approval – in the form of a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) 10 CFR Part 52 combined license (COL) – could be issued within the next three weeks. This would be…