Right-Sizing Nuclear Materials Security

[Marlin]

Right-Sizing Nuclear Materials Security

https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/nuclear-energy-innovation/right-sizing-nuclear-materials-security

[Core Content]

The logo of the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research center based in Berkeley, California. Our research focuses on identifying and promoting technological solutions to environmental and human development challenges in three areas: energy, conservation, and food and farming.

The Breakthrough Institute is engaging extensively as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) implements its ongoing wholesale revision of its regulatory framework following Executive Order 14300. As the agency advances a series of interrelated proposed rules affecting licensing, oversight, and security requirements, BTI has been engaging across...

BTI supports the burden-reducing intent of the proposed rule and agrees that many of the changes reflect sound, risk-informed judgment that should be finalized as drafted, including removal of the ten-year reinvestigation requirement and the prescriptive maintenance-and-testing program where the underlying performance objectives are preserved.

BTI's principal concern is that the rule treats response coordination as a periodic, bilateral licensee-to-local-law-enforcement requirement rather than as part of a holistic, risk-informed incident response architecture. The current structure rests on assumptions that do not fully reflect how a materials-security incident would unfold: that radiological expertise can be transferred to responders at the moment of need, and that the relevant responder population is limited to the licensee and...

Read the full article at The Breakthrough Institute:
https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/nuclear-energy-innovation/right-sizing-nuclear-materials-security