Chairman Jaczko Remarks: Heritage Foundation

Gregory Jaczko, President Obama's new NRC head, outlined his priorities for the agency in a speech at the Heritage Foundation. He said little about new reactor applications, except that the agency would focus its limited application review resources on projects most likely to be built first. What does that mean?

What about DOE and the NP-2010 initiative, and Congress' Next Generation Nuclear Plant? What about new plant licensing? What about the high cost of new plants? What about operating plant performance improvements?

Chairman Jaczko needs to get the chance to firmly plant his feet. Then he should take off charging. If DOE's to have any impact on energy, NRC has to support their effort. They (the NRC) also need to support (coax, push, encourage and pressure) industry to get its act together. For thirty years there has been precious little new nuclear development of new U.S. nuclear application processes and thought. Yes, we have new LWR designs, but we're designing them like we did thirty years ago. And they really aren't new, they're evolutionary. Other than go to exhaustive extremes to prove the licensing cause under Part 52, precious little is new.

We need new thoughts, processes and challenges, and Chairman Jaczko must make that happen.