President Biden recently signed the Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act into law. A bipartisan bill, the ADVANCE Act included several provisions to modernize regulations to build nuclear power and accelerate nuclear innovation in the U.S. While certainly worth celebrating, the ADVANCE Act did not address some of the regulatory impediments that plague the industry. Policymakers must take further action to make nuclear power more competitive in the United States. 

A central tenet of the ADVANCE Act is bringing nuclear’s regulations into the 21st century. The bill does this by changing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) mission statement to consider the benefits of civilian nuclear power. Before the bill’s passage, the NRC’s mission statement only focused on protecting public health and safety, national security, and the environment. 

Ironically, the NRC’s failure to consider nuclear’s benefits, which has helped to create a risk-averse culture that does not prioritize deploying nuclear power efficiently, has negatively impacted the health of the public and environment by stunting the development of the pollution-free energy source. This small, but important, change will help the NRC consider and communicate the economic and environmental benefits of nuclear energy to the public and serve as a reminder that the Agency needs to be an enabler, not a barrier.