NRC holds meeting to discuss transparency in its rulemaking procedures

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, stakeholders and the public discussed efforts to improve how it tracks and reports on its rulemaking process at a recent meeting.

The meeting included public participation in an effort to keep the public fully engaged in the regulatory rulemaking process. The goal of the meeting was to aid in the creation of a commission paper that would recommend improvements to the NRC’s approach for tracking and reporting its rulemaking activities.

During the meeting, attendees and officials discussed several ideas on how to modify their method of tracking and reporting the rulemaking process, including using a single, unified approach to tracking rulemaking activities, informing external stakeholders of changes, using consistent terminology and definitions to characterize the type and status of rulemaking activities, and methods to ensure that the commission, staff and external stakeholders have “real time” access to view current information on rulemaking activities. They also discussed possible improvements to the NRC’s rulemaking website.

Participants in the meeting included representatives from the Office of Executive Director for Operations, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, and Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards.

Representatives from the Nuclear Energy Institute and some non-government organizations were present at the meeting as well.