Karen D. Cyr

Senior Counsel

Karen D. Cyr is senior counsel in Morgan Lewis's Energy Practice. Ms. Cyr focuses her practice on nuclear energy–related legislative, regulatory, administrative, and licensing issues at the state, federal, and international levels.

Prior to joining Morgan Lewis, Ms. Cyr was the longest-serving general counsel to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). In this capacity, she advised the NRC on all matters of law and legal policy and provided opinions and assistance to the agency in all activities, including adjudication, rulemaking, enforcement, legislation, contracts, and personnel matters. She oversaw the approval of the first standardized reactor design and the adoption of the NRC's first comprehensive decommissioning and decontamination criteria. Her legal counsel also resulted in the deployment of effective procedural tools to enable the agency to meet its objectives for timely reactor license renewal and new reactor licensing, including a near-total revision of the NRC's Rules of Practice for licensing and enforcement reviews that established an effective legal framework for rapid agency response to the events of September 11, 2001.

As general counsel, Ms. Cyr represented the NRC before other government agencies, Congress, and foreign governments, and served as a member of the Group of Experts, which developed the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management. She has spoken on various topics at conferences in Chile, Italy, and the Czech Republic and presented the regulatory perspective on nuclear program development at WANO's World Nuclear University in South Korea. She also has presented seminars on reactor licensing and security developments before the International Nuclear Law Association and the International Bar Association.

Before serving as general counsel to the NRC, Ms. Cyr provided legal counsel in various roles to the agency's Commissioners, its chairman, and its chief operating officer. During her tenure at the NRC, Ms. Cyr served as a legal expert to the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Ms. Cyr is a recipient of the Presidential Distinguished and Meritorious Executive Rank Awards and the NRC Distinguished Service Award.

Ms. Cyr received her J.D. from Duke University School of Law in 1977 and studied political science as a graduate trainee at the University of North Carolina. She received her B.S., summa cum laude, in political science and Spanish from Iowa State University, where she graduated Phi Kappa Phi.

Ms. Cyr is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia.