“Noah acknowledges, in passing, one particular provision of the existing nuclear regulatory framework on the United States that\u2019s very important: radiation is held to the As Low As Reasonably Achievable (ALARA) standard, which makes it essentially impossible for nuclear to be cost-competitive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suppose I had a design for a cost-effective nuclear reactor, and I said I should be allowed to build it, because electricity is good and air pollution is bad. The regulator is going to look at it and say, \u201cWell, that reactor seems awfully cheap to build, why not add a bunch more features to make the radiation levels even lower?\u201d And then I will say, \u201cThat would be hideously expensive in a way that is net bad for public health, because it leads to more burning of fossil fuels and worse air pollution.\u201d But the regulator comes back and says, \u201cWe\u2019re not using a cost-benefit framework, we\u2019re using ALARA.\u201d And I say, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t make sense, coal ash is radioactive<\/a> \u2014 you are creating more radiation by raising my costs.\u201d And the regulator says, \u201cI don\u2019t regulate coal plants, I regulate you \u2014 ALARA!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Jason Crawford writes<\/a>, \u201cany technology, any operational improvement, anything that reduces costs, simply gives the regulator more room and more excuse to push for more stringent safety requirements, until the cost once again rises to make nuclear just a bit more expensive than everything else. Actually, it\u2018s worse than that: it essentially says that if nuclear becomes cheap, then the regulators have not done their job<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a deeply dysfunctional regulatory paradigm, and it reflects the Nuclear Regulatory Commission\u2019s origins in 1974 legislation that was explicitly motivated by a belief that the old Atomic Energy Commission was too friendly to the industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2019, Congress passed the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act, which, among other things, \u201crequires the NRC to develop new processes for licensing nuclear reactors, including staged licensing of advanced nuclear reactors.\u201d The hope of NEIMA\u2019s proponents was to change 45 years of the NRC fundamentally being an agency that says \u201cno\u201d to stuff and make them into an agency that would create a regulatory pathway under which new kinds of nuclear reactors could be licensed and built. And after several years, the NRC did get around to writing the new rules for SMRs, but they came up with an even longer and more cumbersome regulatory process<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Earlier this summer, the ADVANCE Act<\/a> reiterated Congress\u2019s determination for the NRC to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the NRC staff, to the best of my knowledge, fundamentally does not believe that America\u2019s elected officials genuinely want them to make it faster and cheaper to build nuclear reactors. And one reason they don\u2019t believe it is that even though the Biden administration says lots of pro-nuclear stuff, has plenty of pro-nuclear appointees, signed the ADVANCE Act, and has done a lot to help with SMRs in terms of financing, they still coughed-up an NRC nominee who basically supports the status quo<\/a>. You need a team of political appointees at the agency who are willing to both drive change and also personally take the heat when change makes people mad. You can\u2019t \u201cjust use nuclear, bro.\u201d You need to put people in place to actually drive specific policy change in a way that will let the industry grow and work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And of course, even if you did that, it might not work.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n