Republican state attorneys general are urging a federal court to toss out licensing requirements that they say unfairly hinder approvals for small nuclear reactors that could help ease pressure on the grid from growing electricity demand.
In a lawsuit filed Dec. 30, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, along with developer Last Energy, said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s rules governing small modular reactors, or SMRs, are holding back their broader deployment.
The commission doesn’t so much regulate new nuclear construction as “ensure it almost never happens,” the attorneys general told the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
“Despite the promise of advanced nuclear technology to improve safety and reliability, and despite numerous laws designed to encourage SMR innovation, the NRC’s misreading of its own scope of authority has become a virtually insuperable obstacle,” they wrote.
