Reason’s Tosin Akintola quoted Nick Loris on the nuclear landscape in America.
Perhaps the most impactful of the four called for a “wholesale revision” of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and its regulations governing the industry. Specifically, it directed the NRC to issue a final decision on all new construction and operating licenses—a process that normally takes years—within 18 months of receiving an application. The order also directed the agency to revisit its radiation standards that inflate the cost of nuclear power projects for no added safety or public health benefit. The agency has begun to reconsider these standards, E&E News reported in March.
These orders, while an important signal to the market, were not particularly novel in policy ideas. Rather, they closely resembled changes that Congress ordered in the 2024 ADVANCE Act, a bill that was a product of a “broader recognition that the regulatory framework,” which didn’t account for new and advanced nuclear technologies, “needed to change,” says Nick Loris, president of energy research firm C3 Solutions.
Three Reforms to Improve Nuclear Energy’s Economic Outlook
Nick Loris writes in The National Interest about three reforms that would improve the nuclear sector’s economic outlook, drawing on