The US Department of Energy (DOE) recently published proposed changes to its Contractor Employee Protection Program in the Federal Register.

The NRC on May 3 took the overdue step of withdrawing portions of certain power reactor security requirements—issued via three agency orders in the aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001, which were subsequently captured in agency regulations

In January, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) staff hosted a public meeting with industry representatives to discuss the staff’s progress in reviewing recommendations for the NRC’s Reactor Oversight Process (ROP) framework enhancement initiative.

A divided Commission at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on January 24 approved the Mitigation of Beyond-Design-Basis Events rulemaking (Final Rule).

Say hello to CUI and get ready to say goodbye to SUNSI. The commissioners of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have directed the staff to proceed with a rulemaking to implement the governmentwide Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) program. One impact of this rulemaking will be to eliminate one of our favorite acronyms: Sensitive Unclassified Non-Safeguards Information (SUNSI). But we are still at least a year away from an official change because the staff doesn’t plan to issue a final rule until 2021.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) revised regulations regarding the medical use of byproduct material became effective on January 14, 2019—six months after being published in final form, and nearly a decade after the proposed rulemaking. See Medical Use of Byproduct Material—Medical Event Definitions, Training and Experience, and Clarifying Amendments, 83 Fed. Reg. 33,046 (July 16, 2018).

On November 19, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Commissioners approved the Staff’s proposed rulemaking plan for expanding physical security licensing options for advanced reactors.

The National Labor Relations Board (Board) published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and Request for Comments in the Federal Register on September 14. The proposed rule seeks to reestablish the standard for determining joint-employer status that existed before the Board’s 2015 Browning-Ferris Industries of California decision.

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently confirmed that state-sponsored hackers successfully gained access to the control rooms of US electric utilities and likely had the ability to disrupt power flows. The Wall Street Journal report describes the activities as part of a long-running campaign targeting US utilities.

The times they are a-changin’ and we need to change with them. Colloquially speaking, this is the overarching theme of SECY-18-0060, “Achieving Modern Risk-Informed Regulation,” an NRC Staff-authored paper that seeks Commission approval of several significant proposed revisions to the NRC’s regulatory framework.