Sec. 2. Sense of Congress
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It is the sense of Congress that— the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (in this Act referred to as the Commission ) should take a more active approach in collaborating with the Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (in this Act referred to as the Committee ) for the purpose of modernizing and evaluating the scope of the Committee, in furtherance of the requirements set out in the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act along with role of the Committee in independently reviewing and resolving key application issues; the Commission staff should improve its preparation for engagements with the Committee to better optimize the review of pending application topics; the Commission and Committee staff should collaborate and review practices to identify best practices that lead to efficient and effective Committee reviews; the Committee should focus its reviews on novel and safety-significant issues in its review process; the Committee shouldn’t heavily focus on reviewing the aspects of reactor technologies that are well known and well understood; the Committee should recognize and understand that the Commission staff time is valuable in ultimately streamlining, and approving, nuclear reactor applications; the Committee should perform a budget review to Committee staff to ensure it’s appropriately staffed to ensure it can meet the anticipated future influx of applications; the Committee should be modernized by improving the internal processes associated with the Committee independent review process; the Committee should consider modifying its Membership Balance Plan to ensure adequate expertise and experience, while simultaneously ensuring increased member diversity, including but not limited to establishing certain term limits to carry forth this intention;
Congress recognizes that the Committee originally provided significant value in providing an independent review of each application, but after decades of accumulating experience and vast changes in nuclear technology, the Committee no longer serves the same role as it originally did; and Congress understands the Committee has the potential to play a valuable role in the Commission licensing review process, but its purpose, processes, and practices need to be improved, economized, and modernized.