U.S. NRC Blog

Jessica Umaña Project Manager, Division of Spent Fuel Storage and Transportation   The idea of transporting nuclear materials can make people nervous. It’s easy to imagine worst-case accidents on the highway or involving a train. But stringent safety...

Neil Sheehan Public Affairs Officer, Region I   It’s easy to imagine the sense of distress that must have washed over a portable nuclear gauge user one recent morning when he realized the device he had stowed in the back of his truck was missing. The...

Michael Norris Reactor Licensing Team Leader Emergency Preparedness Division   When you think of the NRC’s role in emergency preparedness, nuclear power plants probably come first to mind. While we certainly pay a lot of attention to commercial reactors...

Scott Burnell Public Affairs Officer   Anything radioactive makes for good drama – or so many television and movie scriptwriters believe. “China Syndrome” in 1979 and “Silkwood” in 1983 are just two examples of movies with nuclear themes – reactors in...

Glenn Ellmers Senior Communications Specialist   The NRC’s technical experts are highly educated individuals with a lot of expertise in their fields. But getting them to speak in plain English can be a challenge. That can be a problem because the public...

Chris Allen Project Manager Division of Spent Fuel Storage and Transportation   Can a problem show that our regulatory system works? If you don’t think so, read on. Two weeks ago, the NRC published an “information notice” about moisture causing problems...

Neil Sheehan Public Affairs Officer, Region I   It may not be as daunting as searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack, but the process of trying to track down the source of tritium contamination at the Pilgrim nuclear power plant has been long...

Eliot Brenner Director, Office of Public Affairs   Art Linkletter, a 1950s and ‘60s radio and television host, used to interview children for his show “Kids Say the Darndest Things.” In that spirit, at last year’s “Take your Child to Work Day” at the...

Holly Harrington Senior Advisor   The NRC is expanding its social media program next week by launching a pilot of a live discussion platform known as NRC Chat. The first Chat is scheduled for April 30 at 2 p.m. EST on the subject of history of U.S. nuclear...

Mark Lombard Director, Office of Spent Fuel Storage and Transportation   While no one can say with certainty today where spent nuclear fuel will ultimately go for long-term storage or disposal, one thing is clear: the current methods of spent fuel storage...

Viktoria Mitlying Senior Public Affairs Officer Region III   A refueling outage is a time when the number of workers at the plant soars from 700 to about 2,000 — with most working in highly radioactive areas of the plant not accessible during normal...

Ivonne Couret Public Affairs Officer   Are you interested in what President Jimmy Carter looked like when he toured Three Mile Island in the spring of 1979? Or see the change in fashion styles of NRC engineers over the past decades? These photos and more...

Larry Camper Director Division of Waste Management and Environmental Protection   At the NRC, we think of ourselves as an environmental agency. This view is included in the NRC mission statement: “To license and regulate . . . to ensure the adequate protection...

Stephen Dingbaum Assistant Inspector General   The Office of the Inspector General’s most recent report – Audit of NRC’s Safeguards Information Local Area Network and Electronic Safe (SLES) – is now available to the public. This audit set out to determine...

Stephen Dingbaum Assistant Inspector General   The Office of the Inspector General’s most recent report — 2012 NRC Safety Culture and Climate Survey – is now available to the public. The results of the survey of the agency workforce were significantly...

Victor Dricks Senior Public Affairs Officer, Region IV   As the eyes and ears of the NRC, resident inspectors never know when they might have to respond to an emergency at the plants they monitor. Fred Sanchez, Arkansas Nuclear One Senior Resident Inspector...

Matthew Mitchell Chief, Projects Management Branch Japan Lessons-Learned Directorate   When you talk about something over and over again, you sometimes end up with a verbal shorthand to keep conversations moving. The NRC has certainly done that in discussing...

Kim Lukes Health Physicist Office of Federal and State Materials and Environmental Management Programs   Occasionally the Department of Energy makes news when it picks up radioactive materials from users who no longer want them. DOE plays an important...

Andy Imboden Chief, Communications Branch, Waste Confidence Directorate   The NRC’s Waste Confidence Directorate has issued its scoping summary report  – based on the 1,700 comments we received on the question of what issues we’ll consider in the environmental...

Rich Correia Director, Division of Risk Analysis Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research   The NRC’s review of new reactor licenses, renewal of existing licenses or major changes to our safety regulations involves an analysis of the impacts of potential...

Scott Burnell Public Affairs Officer   The NRC has already ordered numerous upgrades to nuclear power plant safety based on what we’ve learned about the Fukushima nuclear incident in 2011. Now, the NRC’s Commission is doing more. They have just approved...

Stephen Dingbaum Assistant Inspector General   The NRC’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) is an independent, objective office tasked with auditing NRC programs and operations with a focus on — among other things — detecting fraud, waste...

Arlette Howard Fee Policy Analyst Office of the Chief Financial Officer   It’s that time of the year, when we ask the public for their comments about proposed changes to our fees. The NRC is required by law to recover approximately 90 percent of our budget...

Lara Uselding Public Affairs Officer, Region IV   The NRC will hold a public meeting March 27 to discuss the status of the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant, located 19 miles north of Omaha. As many know, the plant has been shut down since April 9, 2011, for...

David Skeen Director, Japan Lessons-Learned Directorate   Today is the second anniversary of the terrible earthquake, related tsunami and the resulting nuclear accident in Japan. Two years ago, the world watched in horror as the tragedy unfolded. Almost...