Click here or the image above to watch Round 1 of Ranking Member Capito’s questions. Click here to watch Round 2.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, questioned members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) during a full EPW hearing about encouraging nuclear energy development in West Virginia, as well as the Commission’s budget and telework policies.

HIGHLIGHTS:

ENSURING WEST VIRGINIA CAN LEAD ON NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT: “I wanted to ask specifically about the state of West Virginia because West Virginia recently notified the Commission of its interest in becoming an agreement state. Agreement states assume responsibility to exercise certain regulatory authorities over nuclear materials. And it has a process, and you all review that. In your letter to our governor, Governor Justice, you welcomed the state's interest and I appreciate that. So, I would just ask for your assurance that you will provide all the necessary attention and resources to help review that application that West Virginia has made as well as frequent communications with the state as they're going through this process.”

IN-PERSON WORK CRITICAL FOR NRC STAFF TO CARRY OUT ITS MISSION:

RANKING MEMBER CAPITO:

“Chairman Hanson, the statistics that you generated and that I mentioned in my opening statement…I think as you look further into some of that, there's a great, vast majority of NRC employees that are not in the office six days out of two weeks’ pay period. I mentioned concerns of mentoring. We see this popping up a lot in corporate America. A lot of people are bringing everybody back. I understand when we had this conversation earlier, your response to me was, it needs to be an all-of-government response. In other words, I can't respond at the NRC one way and then have the Department of Energy doing something else because they're going to pick off my talent is the bottom line here. Do you not agree that to have, I know to have a blended work, yes, but to have more people actually in the office mentoring new employees, talking about new technologies that are coming online as a much more effective way to actually get a better result?”

NRC CHAIRMAN HANSON:

“Senator, I definitely agree that there are a lot of advantages of in-person interactions.”

ON POTENTIAL REDEVELOPMENT OF RETIRED CONVENTIONAL ENERGY SITES FOR FUTURE NUCLEAR ENERGY USE:

“The bill that we've been talking about, the ADVANCE bill, that Senator Whitehouse and Senator Carper and I are on among others, directs the NRC to consider options to enable the timely licenses of new nuclear facilities at brownfield sites. This is where our state of West Virginia I think could really have some interesting prospects for retired conventional energy facilities.”

Click HERE to watch Round 1 of Ranking Member Capito’s questions.

Click HERE to watch Round 2 of Ranking Member Capito’s questions.

Click HERE to watch Ranking Member Capito’s opening statement.

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