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Senator says some NRC nominess might be confirmed by year-end

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Senator says some NRC nominess might be confirmed by year-end

The Senate might vote to confirm some Trump administration nominees, possibly including three members for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, by the end of the year, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said Dec. 13.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which Barrasso chairs, on Oct. 25 approved the renomination of NRC Commissioner Jeffery Baran, a Democrat, to serve another five-year term. His current term expires July 30, 2018. In July, the committee approved the nominations of Annie Caputo and David Wright to serve as NRC commissioners. Caputo is a senior Republican staff member of the committee and Wright, also a Republican, is a former utility commissioner from South Carolina.

The full Senate has not voted on any of the three nominees. The NRC has not had a full complement of five commissioners since former Chairman Allison Macfarlane resigned in December 2014 to take an academic position at George Washington University.

Barrasso told reporters Dec. 13 after a committee hearing on NRC oversight that he would be meeting that day with Democratic senators to discuss how to move forward those and other pending nominations.

Asked when the Senate might vote on the NRC nominees, Barrasso said, "I want to get a lot of things done by the end of the year. There are just so many [nominees] backed up in various different branches of government. I'm trying to get a number of those cleared by the end of the year.

"There has been a significant amount of Democrat opposition across the board to a lot of the president's nominees," but "we've been working closely together," Barrasso said.

Asked if any holds had been placed by senators preventing a vote on the NRC nominees, Barrasso said, "We're trying to work a way to get all three of them confirmed."

However, he said, "The list of ... people that have to go through the process, with some of the delaying processes used by the minority party at this point," means Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell "has to prioritize what names [are] to be brought up [for votes, and] when. Because if you use the full 30 hours [of floor debate] on every one, you can only get through three or four nominees a week. There's twelve hundred people that need to be confirmed. There's just not enough hours in the day, so you need to get cooperation."

Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, the senior Democratic member of the committee, told the reporters, "I'm not aware of objections on our side of the aisle to any of the three NRC nominees. There may be [some], but I'm not aware of them."

Steven Dolley, the author of this article, is a reporter for S&P Global Platts, which, like S&P Global Market Intelligence, is owned by S&P Global Inc.