REGULATION | FUNDING FAIL


funded by reimbursable agreements, such as the processing of fingerprints for criminal background checks. Once carryover funds are exhausted the NRC may revisit its plan. It is the Chief Financial


Officer who reallocates, to the extent permitted, all available funds to forestall orderly shutdown, and determines how long the


agency can operate before all


available funds are exhausted. It is office directors and regional administrators who prepare a list of employees to be furloughed by name, grade, job title, office, division, and branch.


Currently the NRC website says the situation is:


● Total number of agency employees expected to be on board before implementation of the plan: 2665


● Total number of agency employees expected to be furloughed under the plan: 1,837


● Compensation financed by a resource other than annual appropriations: None


● Necessary to perform activities expressly authorized by law: None


● Necessary to perform activities necessarily implied by law: 85


● Necessary to the discharge of the President’s constitutional duties and powers: 571


● Necessary to protect life and property: 172


The activities that will be delayed or discontinued, “except as necessary to support excepted functions”, is


comprehensive, including: ● Licensing, certification, and permit activities ● Inspections. ● Inspections, tests, analyses, and acceptance criteria (ITAAC) closure verification reviews.


● Routine enforcement actions ● Notifications, confirmatory order letters, guidance


memos, acknowledgement letters to licensees, alternative dispute resolution case work.


● Emergency preparedness exercises ● Reactor operator licensing, training, and requalification. ● Financial analysis for operating and decommissioning plants.


● Rulemaking and regulatory guidance development. ● Public outreach ● Integrated Source Management Portfolio routine support. ● Decommissioning-related activities ● Routine oversight of Waste Incidental to Reprocessing ● Developing infrastructure for advanced nuclear reactor technologies


● Developing infrastructure for advanced medical technologies and new fuels


● Foreign assistance and cooperation including safeguards ● Support for international travel ● Maintaining and tracking technical cooperation arrangements


● As well as routine activities such as training, human resources management, press notices etc


20 | November 2025 | www.neimagazine.com


Work continues on ‘critical activities’ to fulfil President Trump’s Executive Order 14300’. Dated 23 May 2025, this orders that the NRC be reformed. The NRC has to work with the Department of Government Efficiency Team, and the Office of Management and Budget, on ‘wholesale revision of its regulations and guidance documents’, and produce a rulemaking by 23 February 2026, with final rules and


guidance nine months later. ● Establish fixed deadlines for activity or potential licensee, such as licence evaluation or renewal, rather than nonbinding ‘generic milestone schedules’


● Reconsider the linear no-threshold (LNT) model and the “as low as reasonably achievable” standard for radiation exposure.


● Expedite approval of reactor designs that the DOD or the DOE have tested, to focus solely on risks from new applications.


● Establish a process for high-volume licensing of microreactors and modular reactors.


● Set a higher bar for changes to the design of reactors under construction.


● And generally streamline the reactor licensing process.


When funding runs out The NRC set out timeframes for its actions in the event funds are exhausted, which are predicated on the assumption that carryover funding will forestall furloughs for at least 10 working days. Five days before funding ends contractors will be


informed, some contracts cancelled or stopped and inter-agency working ends. Two days later employees to be furloughed will be identified. Employees will be told furlough is expected on the day before funding ends and the following day will see both furloughed and retained employees informed of their status. Telephones will be answered only to inform callers of the agency status, without responding to new business matters unless of an emergency nature, and meetings will be cancelled. After 21 business days (29 calendar days) furloughed staff we be sent renewed furlough notices and contracts that previously were on ‘stop’ notices may be cancelled. Once NRC carryover funds are exhausted, no funds can be disbursed until additional funds are appropriated. In that case, neither furloughed employees and nor those who are retained will receive their pay for the period until after funds are appropriated to end the shutdown. ■


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