Welcome to the new NRC Blog. We are excited about using this new communications tool and hope it will increase our collaboration and interaction with the public. The blog is intended to serve as a vehicle for informing, explaining and clarifying the actions, roles and responsibilities of the NRC, raising awareness about our agency and its mission, and – most importantly – giving us an opportunity to hear from you.
Staff from throughout the NRC will be posting regularly on the blog, addressing a variety of topics. Just to be clear, the blog is not replacing our usual modes of communicating with and getting feedback from the public. Instead, it is an additional way of communicating with you. We will continue to rely on public meetings, Federal Register notices and traditional media to convey official information.
We hope you will comment on our posts and on the comments of others. Please be sure to read the Blog Guidelines before doing so. Comments are moderated and we will review them and get them up as quickly as possible during regular business hours.
If you have questions, issues or concerns about nuclear safety or security, contracting with the NRC, or working at our agency, please use the links below to find more information:
Allegations: http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/regulatory/allegations/safety-concern.html.
Doing business with the NRC: http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/contracting.html.
Job opportunities with the NRC: http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/employment.html.
Welcome again to the new NRC Blog. We hope this is the beginning of a lively and engaging dialogue.
Gregory Jaczko
Chairman, NRC
U.S. NRC Blog 
Hello I am so delighted I found your blog, I really found you by mistake, while I was looking on Search Engine for something else, This message are obviously from your personal experience. It’s a authentic and fantastic for anyone. I will remain awhile for your message. Really I am impressed with your message content. Keep up the great work. I will bookmark your blog and have my friends check up here often. I am quite sure they will learn lots of new stuff here than anybody else . I respect you from the core of the heart.
I welcome the spirit behind NRC’s blog initiative but find it totally contrary to the manner in which Chairman Jaczko has dispositioned the Yucca Mountain LA. His action does damage to the agency’s reputation, which is unfortunate given the stellar reputation image the agency has worked so hard to earn over the years.
I welcome this opportunity to engage a well respected federal agency on topics that are vital to our nation’s future, yet natuarally controversial. Healthy, open debate based on science and objective evidence is always good. That being said I think the NRC Chairman is risking the excellent reputation of his organization, by allowing even the perception of politics entering into NRC’s decisions regarding the Yucca Mountain Project to continue to exist. Notwithstanding the moderator’s rebuttal to Mr. Quinn’s earlier observations in this regard I think many, if not most, informed observers would disagree. While I believe the vast majority of the rank and file and senior management of the NRC is truly committed to fair and open technical decision processes, claiming that the Chair is likewise committed is not credible, in my view. As they say in some parts of the country, “that dog won’t hunt”.
Thanks for your reply, yet i believe that the safety of the public is best served by a single repository. Knowing in advance that all nuclear fuel would be stored on each nuclear site in forever, changes the original environmental impact of all facilities. When a licensee takes action the NRC governs inappropriate they take action. Why is that not true when the government takes adverse action?
I advocate advanced nuclear power such as the liquid fluoride thorium reactor. Today the NRC deals with LWRs. Perhaps you could write two posts on NRC concepts that might be helpful to advanced concepts like LFTR, PB-AHTR, etc. I’m specifically interested in the concept of “licensing by demonstration”, and also “technology neutral” regulation.
How do we know the White House and DOE made the decision since there is no Record of Decision? Can buildings make decisions? I think you meant to say that President Obama and Secretary Chu made the decision. The decision to cancel Yucca Mountain licensing review at the NRC was made by Chairman Jaczko without consulting the other NRC Commissioners. Since he consulted his lawyers and CFO and not the other Commissioners, it is clear that he did in fact act unilateraly.
I hope that you will take into consideration the full scope of the comments you receive and not censor them.
All comments will be archived along with the original post. Neither comments nor posts will be deleted. However, comments will only be accepted for each post for 30 days. Generally speaking, we are not editing comments except for occasionally removing content that does not adhere to the comment guidelines. We’ll indicate when we’ve done that. As for the search feature on the sidebar, it is full text search on blog posts and static page content, such as the comment guidelines. Users can enter a word, a combination of words or a phase in the search field as search criteria.
Although the NRC should not and does not legally have a role in setting policy on energy use or spent fuel disposal, it has nevertheless muscled out a political position on the Yucca Mountain Project.
The NRC’s own Atomic Safety Licensing Board unanimously rejected the U.S. Department of Energy’s Yucca Mountain project license withdrawal request in accordance with the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. Despite this, NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko ordered the agency’s review of the Yucca Mountain license application stopped.
The full NRC commission is now ruling on this issue. In what took the ASLB 39 days to decide, the NRC commission is still deciding and has been doing so for over 200 days.
This blog has supposedly been created to increase the NRC’s functioning as a transparent branch of government, however Chairman Jaczko’s decisions have been anything but transparent.
I will confine this comment to one sentence of the “moderator”: “As for long-term storage of spent fuel, the NRC has examined the safety performance of pools and casks, and is confident that the fuel can be stored safely at reactor sites for at least 60 years beyond the licensed life of the reactor.”
The problem, of course, is that there is no way to assure that the spent fuel can be kept out of the biosphere for the remaining 250,000 (or more) years that it will be dangerous. The fact that the NRC thinks planning ahead 60 years is adequate is proof that the agency has blinders on, and is indeed promoting the industry at the expense of the safety of all life forms.
Thank you for your comments. The NRC strives to be a fair and firm regulator and a regulatory model. However, we feel it important to clarify what the NRC’s role is in terms of charting energy policy in this country. The NRC has no role in setting policy on energy use in this country or spent fuel disposal. Setting such policy is the responsibility of the White House, Congress and the Department of Energy. The decision to cancel the Yucca Mountain Project was made by the White House and the Department of Energy, not the NRC. As for long-term storage of spent fuel, the NRC has examined the safety performance of pools and casks, and is confident that the fuel can be stored safely at reactor sites for at least 60 years beyond the licensed life of the reactor. We will have more to say on this “waste confidence” determination in a future blog post.
Finally, we want to emphasize: The NRC is neither pro-nuclear nor anti-nuclear in stance. What we are is pro-safety and security. We will discuss how we accomplish that task in future blog posts.
I am still not clear on the archiving of all our comments on the NRC blog, you close comments after 30 days…but will our comments stay on the blog for posterity?
I like looking up and researching old comments…so I favor not deleting anything.
How about, I have issues with spelling and phraseology, do we have a editing function?
The search feature, will it be a title or a full word search?
As a person I have no confidentially or anonymity issues.
I do receive other communications from you, which I do enjoy being kept up to date. However, I do think this is a excellent idea. Thank you for sharing and keep up the good work.
I’m very excited that students will have the opportunity to listen in (and possibly chime in) early in their careers and get a feel for what’s going on in the nuclear industry. Maybe it will inspire a new wave of interest, ideas, and interactivity that would not have occurred otherwise? Really great!
As a staff of the NRC, I welcome this new website. It gives me an opportunity to interact with the public, their opinions, etc. in an informal manner. The fomal way of interaction through public meetings provides a great opportunity, but is limited to those meetings only. Interaction with the public through this blog, in an informal manner, is an additional welcome opportunity to articulate how we contribute to agency’s msission of protecting the public and the environment.
I look forward to fruitful engagement with the public.
Interesting blog. I hope the NRC will respond to blog comments with definitive (not vague) and truthful answers.
If so, it may no longer be called the “UNCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION.”
Thanks for the opportunity to have access to this blog. First i would publicly like to go on record and say that of all the federal entities I have ever dealt with, I believe the NRC to be one of the few federal agencies I could put faith in. I think the NRC is a trusted, faithful and good regulator. But speaking as a plant operator, vice president and senior nuclear officer a tough demanding regulator. I think it should be used as a model for agencies overseeing the banking and investment communities. I believe that the BP disaster could have been prevented with effective oversight as could much of the financial problems we have had.
That being said, i believe that politics should have no place in the agency. Proper use, availability and safety of nuclear power is required. To that end the cessation of licensing activities of Yucca Mountain is unacceptable and a breach of public trust. The environmental impact of 40-50 long term repositories at the existing nuclear sites has never been examined in its fullness. Monies collected from rate payers has been wasted and our soldiers continue and will continue to die trying to keep the oil flowing. We need a comprehensive and complete energy policy and effective, safe, cost efficient nuclear power is needed. We need energy independence. You are obligated to give it to us. Get it done!!!!
I am willing to be convinced that this communication method will actually serve the public and not just become another tool for the nuclear industry to co-opt NRC decision making. Meanwhile, thanks to the NRC staff for affirming that conceptual “small modular reactors” being pursued at DOE sites will have to obtain NRC licenses. See January 19 news release at: “Firm Plans to Pursue Experimental Nuclear Reactors without Required Licenses” – http://www.foe.org/firms-plan-pursue-experimental-nuclear-reactors-without-required-licenses
You told me about this site a few months ago that it was coming, and I welcome it today. A site like this could be very beneficial.
It is going to need a test drive?
Mike