Nuclear Regulators Set Faster Deadlines for Licensing Hearings

The rule creates three defined hearing tracks corresponding to broader licensing-review schedules:

• Standard Proceedings: Generally associated with 18-month reviews, with hearing schedules designed to permit two non-overlapping evidentiary hearings within 13.5 months.
• Focused Proceedings: Generally associated with 12-month reviews, with shorter adjudicatory schedules.
• Expedited Proceedings: Reserved for faster reviews, with some proceedings following schedules of approximately six months or less.

NRC Chairman Ho Nieh said the rule preserves public participation while making hearings more efficient and described it as part of enabling the safe and secure deployment of nuclear technologies. The American Nuclear Society's Nuclear News reported that the rule leaves safety standards unchanged. The Nuclear Innovation Alliance backed clear deadlines and eliminating outdated model milestones, and urged consistent application of standing and admissibility standards to exclude immaterial contentions filed after record closure.

The rule replaces the framework set by the 2004 Adjudications Rule, which the NRC says established non-binding model milestones that were sometimes exceeded in practice. The NRC published the proposed rule March 3, received 33 unique comment submissions by the April 2 deadline, and dropped two provisions before issuing the final rule.

What Changes for Hearing Participants

Under the prior framework, evidentiary hearings generally did not begin until NRC staff completed its safety and environmental review. The new rule requires the presiding officer to "immediately proceed with the evidentiary hearing phase" on an admitted contention, subject to two exceptions: when NRC staff has decided to participate as a party but cannot yet take final positions, or when staff or the applicant intends to seek dismissal or summary disposition.

The filing deadline for hearing requests in Expedited Proceedings is 30 days from Federal Register publication, half the previous general 60-day period. Focused Proceedings carry a 45-day deadline, while Standard Proceedings retain 60 days.

Late-filed contentions cannot be considered pending before the Commission unless a presiding officer grants a motion for leave to file after finding good cause. The party must show that the information was not previously available, is materially different from previously available information, and that the filing occurred within 30 days of the new information becoming available, or 20 days for license transfer and Expedited Proceedings. Additional restrictions apply to contentions filed sufficiently late in the proceeding to trigger the standards for reopening the record.

Nonpublic draft documents that have not been circulated among the parties or publicly disclosed, along with internal text, instant and voice messages, are excluded from mandatory disclosures under 10 C.F.R. § 2.336, absent exceptional circumstances for the internal communications. Relevant attachments to otherwise excluded messages remain subject to disclosure. NRC staff will also no longer be required to produce a separate hearing file.

The Cost Estimates

The NRC projects the following reductions in resource burdens per proceeding in which a hearing request is filed:

• Applicants: From 3,925 hours to 3,025 hours.
• Petitioners: From 1,975 hours to approximately 1,525 hours.
• NRC adjudicatory decision-making staff: From 4,700 hours to 3,900 hours.

The NRC also projects that its technical staff and attorneys participating as parties will see their average resource burden decline from 4,150 hours to 3,025 hours per proceeding.

The NRC estimates roughly 15 license proceedings per year will be the subject of a hearing request over the 2026-2030 analysis period, based on an expected increase of up to nine new reactor applications per year and 20 power reactor license renewal applications during that period. The agency estimates it will grant hearing requests in nine of those 15 proceedings and that about five will proceed to evidentiary hearings. It describes the estimates as subject to "substantial uncertainty."

What Two Proposed Provisions Did Not Survive

The NRC dropped two provisions before finalizing the rule. The first would have required litigants to provide more information on the merits of proposed contentions in initial filings. The agency concluded that the requirement would increase resource burdens on participants in an effort to shorten the overall schedule, with limited savings because most proposed contentions are not admitted.

The second would have accelerated separate consideration of standing before decisions on contention admissibility. The NRC eliminated it after concluding that presiding officers "usually find that petitioners demonstrate standing" and that significant litigant resources could be spent on contentions before a standing decision was issued.

The Bottom Line

The rule takes effect Dec. 3 and applies to contested adjudicatory proceedings noticed on or after that date. Parties can review the NRC's Comment Response Document through Regulations.gov under Docket ID NRC-2025-1501 or in the agency's ADAMS document system.

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