The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff recently submitted recommendations and planned actions to the Commission aimed at enhancing elements of the Reactor Oversight Process (ROP) consistent with the Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy Act of 2024 (ADVANCE Act). These efforts would also in part be responsive to recently issued Executive Order 14300, “Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.”
NRC Staff Recommends Enhancements to the ROP
Section 507 of the ADVANCE Act (Pub. L. No. 118-67, div. B, § 507) requires the NRC to assess its oversight and inspection programs and identify how they can be improved. Following this assessment, the NRC staff prepared SECY-25-0045, which provides recommendations and planned actions on ROP enhancements.
SECY-25-0045 addresses only select topics. The NRC staff determined that a comprehensive review is still needed and plans to complete this review by 2025, with a notation vote paper to the Commission by April 2026.
Core Recommendations and Planned Actions in SECY-25-0045
- Assessment Program Refinements: Re-baseline the ROP, grant licensee-identification credit for White findings, and revise the Action Matrix to prevent certain escalations.
- Cross-Cutting Issues Program: Characterize inspection findings by cross-cutting area instead of cross-cutting aspect.
- Operator Licensing: Modify guidance to shift away from each NRC region preparing at least one power reactor initial operator licensing examination a year.
- Inspection Program: Allow for hybrid inspections; consolidate traditional enforcement follow-up inspections; eliminate duplicative inspection procedures; clarify remote entrance and exit meeting expectations; reduce specific inspection samples, documentation, and team sizes; and minimize dual-path processing for ROP and traditional enforcement violations.
- Security Inspection Program: Reduce the frequency of force-on-force inspection exercises; revise the baseline security significance determination process to better incorporate risk integration and ensure consistency; enhance the security issues forum process; remove and relocate certain inspection procedures; and revise the cybersecurity baseline inspections from biennial to triennial.