The NRC Lost 510 Employees in 16 Months. It Hired 59.
Summary
Washington wants the fastest nuclear buildout in decades, and every reactor has to clear the Nuclear Regulatory Commission first. Since January 2025 the agency has lost 510 staff and replaced 59 of them, a commissioner told the Senate — and its own FY2027 budget request would cut 196 more positions, an 8% cut to a $971.5 million budget, even as a reorganization one lawmaker says could cost nearly 40% of reactor-oversight staff their jobs.
Follow the dollar
The isn't funded like most federal agencies. Under the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act, the Commission has to recover roughly 100% of its budget from the industry it regulates — reactor owners, license applicants, materials handlers — not from general tax revenue. In the FY2026 final fee rule, issued June 16, 2026, the set its total budget authority at $971.5 million and its fee-recovery target at 100% of everything except a short list of "excluded activities" — Inspector General oversight, Nuclear Waste Fund work, and a few others Congress carved out. Industry pays $818.8 million of the bill directly; the public picks up $152.6 million.
View data as table
| Hourly service fees (10 CFR part 170) | $188.2M | billed to applicants |
|---|---|---|
| Annual fees (10 CFR part 171) | $630.6M | billed to licensees |
| General appropriations | $152.6M | excluded activities only |
That structure matters for the politics of what happens next. Cutting the 's budget doesn't save a taxpayer-funded agency money in any straightforward sense — most of the dollars in that chart come from the companies applying for licenses, not the general fund. What a smaller budget buys instead is a smaller . The agency's own FY2027 request asks for $892.3 million, about 8% less than the FY2026 enacted level, funding 2,606 full-time positions — a 7%, 196-position cut from the roughly 2,802-position FY2026 ceiling, according to the NRC's FY2027 Congressional Budget Justification (NUREG-1100, Volume 42). The request itself credits about $6 million and 30 of that reduction to licensing "efficiencies" and $9 million and 40 to the reactor oversight program.
The same system, counted in people
The budget line is a forecast. What's already happened to the 's workforce is not. Testifying before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on May 13, 2026, Commissioner Bradley R. Crowell put it plainly: "Just in the past 16 months we have lost 510 employees, including many senior executives and subject matter experts, while adding only 59 new staff," per Bloomberg Law's account of the hearing. Three weeks earlier, at a House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy hearing, Ranking Member Kathy Castor cited a slightly earlier snapshot of the same exodus — "over 500 professional staffers have left, with only 65 arrivals, about a 15 percent decrease in staffing" since January 2025 — confirmed directly in the official hearing transcript. The 's own response, per that same Senate hearing, is about 15 open job postings, a plan to hire roughly 80 people — mostly from outside the agency — and 30 summer interns.
View data as table
| Left the agency since Jan. 2025 | 510 | Sen. EPW hearing, May 13, 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Hired in the same 16 months | 59 | Sen. EPW hearing, May 13, 2026 |
| More cut in the FY2027 request | 196 | NRC FY2027 budget request |
The reorganization behind those cuts isn't evenly spread. At the same April 22 House hearing, Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone warned that changes to the 's Reactor Oversight Program — the office responsible for policing the safety of reactors already operating — "could result in nearly 40 percent of the reactor oversight staff losing their jobs or being reassigned," a figure confirmed in the hearing transcript and repeated in Pallone's own office statement. Commissioner Crowell, for his part, told the same House committee the agency is "being directed to do more with less, despite a growing workload and aggressive new timeframes for agency licensing and oversight activities," calling it "an unsustainable dynamic." Asked how the is managing so far, Crowell said it's only possible because the agency is reviewing new reactor applications "pretty much in a one-at-a-time framework" — a framework that runs out the moment more than one arrives at once, which is exactly what the new Part 53 rule is designed to invite.
The takeaway
- The money and the people are two different cuts, moving the same direction. The FY2027 budget request trims $79.2 million and 196 positions on paper; the workforce has already lost 510 people in 16 months with 59 replacements hired. The request formalizes a shrinkage that started well before Congress voted on it.
- Industry funds the agency, but the public funds its independence. 100% fee recovery means reactor owners bankroll most of the 's day-to-day work either way — so a smaller budget isn't primarily a taxpayer savings. It's fewer inspectors, reviewers, and license examiners, funded by fees that keep flowing regardless.
- The licensing pipeline is being widened just as the staff to run it is being narrowed. Part 53 opened a faster path for advanced reactors in April 2026 on a "one-at-a-time" review capacity a sitting commissioner says can't yet handle concurrent applications — and a reorganization a senior lawmaker says could reassign or eliminate 40% of the staff who inspect the reactors already running.
Budget and fee figures are drawn from the 's FY2026 final fee rule and FY2027 budget request as filed; individual line items are independently rounded by the source documents and won't sum to the cent. Staffing figures combine two hearings measuring the same 16-month period from slightly different cutoff dates (April 22 and May 13, 2026), each attributed to its own hearing above.
Sources
- , Fee Schedules; Fee Recovery for Fiscal Year 2026, final rule, 91 Fed. Reg. 36470 (June 16, 2026) — the source for FY2026 total budget authority ($971.5M), the 100% fee-recovery requirement, and the breakdown between industry-billed fees and general appropriations. federalregister.gov
- , Congressional Budget Justification: Fiscal Year 2027 (NUREG-1100, Volume 42) — the source for the $892.3 million FY2027 request, the 2,606 staffing level, and the licensing/oversight program reductions. nrc.gov
- U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Energy, hearing transcript, Nuclear Regulatory Commission: Oversight, April 22, 2026 — official record of Rep. Kathy Castor's staffing-decline figures and Rep. Frank Pallone's reactor-oversight reorganization warning. congress.gov
- Bloomberg Law, US Nuclear Regulators Show Concern Over Staffing Impacts on Work — reporting on Commissioner Bradley Crowell's May 13, 2026 Senate testimony citing 510 departures and 59 hires over 16 months. news.bloomberglaw.com
- ANS Nuclear Newswire, commissioners talk attrition, recruitment, retention at Senate hearing — additional coverage of the May 13, 2026 Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing, including hiring and internship plans. ans.org
- House Committee on Energy and Commerce (Democrats), press release, Pallone Issues Warning at Oversight Hearing — official statement corroborating the reactor-oversight-staff reorganization figure. democrats-energycommerce.house.gov
- Morgan Lewis, Launches Fresh Licensing Framework for New Reactors — confirms the April 29, 2026 effective date of the Part 53 advanced-reactor licensing rule. morganlewis.com
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Congress spent 2025 and 2026 telling the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to move faster: the ADVANCE Act ordered a new licensing track for advanced reactors, Executive Order 14300 told the agency to reform itself further, and on April 29, 2026 the 's new "Part 53" rule took effect — an optional, faster licensing pathway built for the wave of small modular reactors and microreactors developers want built, according to Morgan Lewis. Nobody, in the same two years, told the how to do that with the staff it had — because it no longer has them.