The offices for the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in North Bethesda, Maryland. The NRC’s recent mission update reflects a shift in how the United States approaches nuclear regulation. (Wikimedia commons/Tony Webster)

Mission Possible: The NRC’s Shift Is More Than Symbolic

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After decades defined by safety dominance, the NRC may be recalibrating toward a renewed balance between oversight and expansion.

The history of nuclear energy in the United States illustrates the difficulties of balancing two goals: expanding nuclear energy and regulating it. Today, the revival of nuclear energy in the United States moves beyond reactor design, fuel-cycle safety, and disposal technology. It is being tested in the most crucial area—with its regulator, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which was established as an independent agency in 1974 to oversee the civilian nuclear energy industry in the United States. A significant increase in electricity demand is renewing pressure to commission new reactors. As a result, the NRC faces realignment of its objectives with the imperatives of new energy demand and policies. This tension remains as complex a topic today as it was some 50 years ago. 

A few years after the 1942 Chicago Pile-1, the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reactor in a man-made reactor, an experimental breeder reactor at a site in Idaho, generated the first electricity from nuclear energy in 1951. The United States developed its first nuclear reactor, a pressurized water reactor (PWR), under Admiral Hyman Rickover as prototype Mark 1, which was deployed to power the US submarine USS Nautilus in........

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