News & Events

Introduction
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It is a great pleasure and honor to address this milestone gathering today. As the aptly chosen title of this conference reminds us, this is a year of fiftieth anniversaries: fifty years since President Dwight Eisenhower’s visionary and eloquent speech to the United Nations; fifty years also since a far-sighted Congress enacted the Atomic Energy Act, and opened the way to an era in which the atom would become an agent of human betterment rather than of destruction, bringing health to the sick; and safe, clean, affordable electrical power to an energy deficient world.

Many things have changed in 50 years, but the NRC’s job has not changed. Our job is to enable the use and management of radioactive materials and nuclear fuels for beneficial civilian purposes in a manner that

1. protects public health and safety and the environment,
2. promotes the security of our nation, and
3. provides for regulatory actions that are open, effective, efficient, realistic, and timely.

In the context of this conference’s focus on “the next 50 years,” I have been asked today to address the “regulatory perspective.” I’d like to do so by reviewing where the NRC stands today in its regulation of nuclear power; the directions in which our regulatory program is moving; and the relationship between regulatory programs and industry’s own role in the further growth and development of a safe nuclear option. I have subtitled this presentation “Between a Rock and a Nice Place.” It should be an interesting exercise for us to find the rocks, the hard places, and the nice places, looking at the past, the present, and the future of nuclear power. We can see occasionally difficult times, the improved safety and reliability of the industry’s performance, and, yes, the improved predictability and consistency of the regulator’s performance, as well as many challenges.