New Red Tape Makes New Nuclear Reactors ‘Impossible’

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) bureaucracy has proposed new rules for approving nuclear reactors — rules that are mathematically impossible to meet. Not nearly impossible. Actually impossible. The new framework for risk assessment is ostensibly meant to offer a simpler way of calculating risk. But several unrealistic assumptions built into the proposed framework make it vanishingly unlikely that any new reactor could ever again clear the hurdle of the risk-assessment portion of the regulatory-approval process.

The proposed change to the way the NRC assesses risks will turn the already arduous approval process for new reactors into an unnavigable, Kafkaesque nightmare.