Peace Garden News

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), member of the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, questioned Jeffery Baran about his voting record on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) as he seeks a third term. The Senator raised concerns Mr. Baran’s goals for the Commission could impede the advancement of nuclear energy technologies and asked him about comments he has made on environmental justice as a regulator.

Senator Cramer reiterated the lack of clarity surrounding Mr. Baran’s stance on key issues impacting the development of nuclear technologies. He underscored the importance of maintaining states’ regulatory flexibilities and addressed Mr. Baran’s voting record.

“You've been the sole dissenter a number of times, including against a development of more generic [Environmental Impact Statement] that can help speed up some of this. And it’s not even about speeding it up, it’s about streamlining – keeping it safe, but streamlining, recognizing that in the smaller reactors we can have a little more generic process,” said Senator Cramer. “I'm concerned you're the one impediment on the NRC, not the one who’s truly an advocate for advancing – safely advancing – this important technology to meet the climate and energy security goals you spoke about in your opening statement. Can you respond? Is that a justified concern by me?”

Regarding the Generic Environmental Impact Statement proposal, Mr. Baran acknowledged, “Maybe I was overly skeptical of that to begin with.” 

“For each of the resource areas, they came up with, basically, entry criteria. If you have a site that would do this, we can make these findings. If you have a reactor that meets this, we can make this finding on noise, or this finding on land effects or aquatic. So, I support finalizing that,” continued Mr. Baran. “It's going to narrow – if used well, and hopefully it will work – narrow the issues that need to be resolved for each individual reactor application that comes in, and I think that's heading in the right direction.” 

Senator Cramer then pivoted to comments Mr. Baran has made on environmental justice and related efforts by the Biden administration. He also highlighted North Dakota’s all-the-above energy portfolio, as well as his experience with resource planning using clean coal, natural gas, wind, and solar from North Dakota and nuclear from Minnesota.  

“You’ve been such a strong advocate for environmental justice, to the point of advocating for having an advisory commission committee right in the NRC on the topic. In fact, I have the transcripts of your last two speeches before the Regulatory Conference where you lauded the White House's Office on Environmental Justice,” said Senator Cramer. “When a regulatory agency gets involved in the political policy side of things, you become more of an impediment to the advancement of this technology than you do and advocate for it. We shouldn't be advocates either as regulators, but again, is my concern justified given your record on voting and the public comments you've made related to environmental justice?

“I definitely don't see pursuing environmental justice as an impediment to existing fleet or to new reactors; I see it as something that's going to benefit all stakeholders,” responded Mr. Baran. “We don't have, under the Atomic Energy Act, the latitude to consider environmental justice as a licensing factor. I don't think anyone's contemplating that. That wouldn't work under our statutory authority.”

Original source can be found here.