Nuclear Regulatory Commission

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is the United States federal agency responsible for regulating civilian nuclear power and radioactive materials. Created in 1975 from the ashes of the Atomic Energy Commission, the NRC was fundamentally restructured after the Three Mile Island accident, expanding its resident inspector program and developing probabilistic risk assessment methodologies that attempted to quantify the unquantifiable. Critics argue that the NRC's mandate to simultaneously promote and regulate nuclear power created institutional conflicts that persist today — a tension between safety and industry viability that mirrors the broader efficiency–resilience tradeoff found in all high-risk technological systems.