NRC reviews first 100 days after reorganization

Roughly 100 days ago, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission began a massive structural reorganization, which included, among other changes, a reorganization around core business lines and the establishment of two new offices: the Office of the Chief Nuclear Reactor Inspector and the Office of Advanced Reactors.

On October 15, NRC officials and staff met with the five commissioners at the NRC Region IV offices in Arlington, Texas, to assess the successes and challenges resulting from the reorganization. Commissioners welcomed the chance to hold a meeting at a regional office, which allowed them to see firsthand how the changes are impacting staff not based at the NRC's Maryland headquarters. One of the main changes to the reorganization is having all four regional offices report to the new CNRI.

"Success of this reorganization isn't going to be measured by what our org charts look like," said NRC Chairman Ho Nieh. "It ultimately will be measured largely by the performance of the facilities that are being overseen here in the region."

Reactor oversight: The first half of Thursday's meeting focused on reactor oversight, with topics ranging from the newly formed CNRI, revisions made to the Reactor Oversight Process (ROP), the current health of the Resident Inspector Program, and the effectiveness of distributed and shared oversight functions.

The CNRI has 530 staff members spread out in 28 different states, providing more than 65,000 hours of direct inspection at 55 reactor sites. This office oversees operating reactors (including nonpower reactors), all reactor safety security inspections, operator licensing, vendor inspections, and support functions.

CNRI acting director Jeremy Groom said one of the central challenges of the reorganization was bringing together under one office all these oversight functions that at one point were dispersed across multiple divisions. Careful planning, collaboration, and focusing on program integrity have helped make the transition a success so far.

"Through that effort, we were able to build an integrated headquarter structure that reduces fragmentation, strengthens national consistency, and streamlines decision-making across the agency," Groom said.

At the resident inspector level, ROP revisions have reduced the number of annual baseline inspection hours from 2,018 to 1,162-a 42 percent decrease. This decrease is higher than original projections NRC staff shared earlier in the year. Amber Donley, senior resident inspector at the Turkey Point nuclear power plant in Florida City, Fla., said this includes a 36 percent decrease in reactor safety inspection hours, which she argued has helped her.

"These efficiency gains allow residents to focus attention on risk-significant plant evolutions and major maintenance activities, including refueling outages," she said.

One area where Donley said she's already noticed personal improvements is in the revisions to the more-than-minor screening criteria. She said she saw efficiency gains in her second and third quarter screening processes, which helped her report faster and more consistently, with greater clarity, with less unnecessary documentation, and supported with more predictable outcomes.

"From a resident perspective, including my own, these changes have increased time spent on purposeful observations and reduced time spent on admin mechanics," she said.

Others who spoke during this panel discussion included Mike King, executive director of operations Mike King; Greg Warnick, director of the Division of Reactor Projects for Region IV; and Shelbie Lewman, acting chief of the CNRI's Allegations and Enforcement Branch Acting Chief.

Materials oversight: The second half of the meeting focused on changes to the NRC's materials oversight divisions. Five panelists provided the information, which related primarily to the Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards (NMSS): Sabrina Atack, deputy executive director for Reactor, Materials, and Preparedness Programs (the division overseeing NMSS); Jamie Pelton, deputy office director for regional oversight and chief nuclear materials inspector in the Chief Nuclear Materials Inspectorate (CNMI); Jared Heck, director of the Division of Federal Materials Programs (DFMP); Jonathan Pfingsten, senior health physicist with the DFMP's Inspection and Licensing Branch 2; and Lizette Roldán-Otero, branch chief for the DFMP's Inspection and Licensing Branch 3.

Atack began the session by explaining that under the new organizational structure, the office of the CNMI oversees two divisions within NMSS that are responsible for a wide range of duties:

The DFMP manages licensing and inspections of nuclear material users in the medical, academic, and industrial fields and offers support for states that are members of the NRC's Agreement States program.

The Division of Fuels, ISFSIs, and Transportation (DFIT) provides inspections and oversight of fuel facilities as well as transportation licensees and used fuel storage sites. (ISFSIs stands for independent spent fuel storage installations.)

With three of the panelists representing the DFMP, the bulk of the prepared statements detailed how changes to the organizational structure have affected licensing and inspection procedures. Describing one notable change, Pelton, Heck, and Pfingsten all mentioned that nuclear materials users had been grouped into six geographical regions prior to the reorganization but now are sorted into three within the DFMP: East, Central, and West. Pfingsten added that each of the three regions has consolidated its licensing and inspection functions and medical and industrial applications into a unified regional program.

Pfingsten stated, "This consolidation has improved the flow of information between functional areas, including through knowledge transfer sessions within multiple inspection of licensing branches." However, during the Q&A portion of the discussion, NRC Commissioner Bradley Crowell suggested that the idea of three geographical regions within the DFMP could cause confusion next to the four regional oversight branch offices that the NRC operates.

Other changes discussed included consolidation of the regional state agreement officers into one branch within the DFMP, creation of a single office-wide log of NMSS documents, and reduction of the number of personnel involved in enforcement operations when appropriate.

Heck, the director of the DFMP, said that so far in 2026, the department has issued 40 new licenses and performed more than 400 inspections. However, the panelists acknowledged challenges that the reorganization has created, including increased workloads and larger staff-to-supervisor ratios in each regional branch as a result of consolidation.

Nieh summarized the discussion in his closing statements by saying, "What I saw today was excellence in our leadership, in our staff, in executing a major reorganization. I didn't hear anything that suggests we have fatal flaws with this reorganization, but I recognize it's not perfect . . . . We have to check and adjust."