GAO Urges NRC Action on Radiological Security, Cost Estimates, and Climate Risks

In its May 2025 report, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a direct appeal to the Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), emphasizing the need for urgent and sustained attention to nine open priority recommendations. These recommendations are vital to national security and public health, and they fall into three critical areas: strengthening radiological source security, improving cost estimating practices, and incorporating climate change risks into regulatory decisions.

Foremost among GAO’s concerns is the vulnerability of high-risk radioactive materials such as americium-241, particularly those sourced internationally. The GAO warns that the lack of a disposal pathway for these foreign-origin materials poses an unacceptable risk of theft and misuse, including potential use in dirty bombs. The agency recommends that NRC, in coordination with the Department of Energy, assess long-term storage or recycling options to better secure this material. Despite agreeing in principle, NRC has taken no meaningful steps to implement this recommendation as of April 2025.

Equally troubling are the systemic weaknesses in NRC’s licensing and verification processes for Category 3 radioactive materials. GAO has issued multiple recommendations—some dating back nearly a decade—urging NRC to adopt modern security measures such as multifactor authentication, electronic licensing, and mandatory license verification. The failure to enact these reforms has led GAO to recommend congressional intervention. Notably, in March 2024, the NRC Commission failed to approve a rule mandating verification of Category 3 licenses, and in response, GAO called on Congress to legislate these security safeguards. A related bill, the Securing our Radioactive Materials Act, was introduced in 2025 to address these critical gaps.

Beyond security, GAO criticized NRC’s outdated cost estimating procedures. NRC relies on cost estimates to inform regulatory decisions, yet it has not aligned its processes with best practices identified in GAO’s Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide. Although NRC has undertaken updates, including revisions in response to Office of Management and Budget guidance, the final procedures remain pending. GAO emphasizes that without reliable estimates, NRC’s regulatory decisions may lack the financial accuracy necessary to support sound policy.

The final area of concern centers on NRC’s approach to risk-informed decision-making, particularly the need to incorporate climate change projections into its regulatory framework. GAO recommends that NRC develop formal guidance on the use of climate data in licensing and oversight. While NRC acknowledges this recommendation and has contracted a review of the Fifth National Climate Assessment, no finalized guidance exists. GAO argues that fully integrating climate risk will enhance NRC’s ability to fulfill its mandate of protecting public health and safety amid increasing climate volatility.

GAO’s report also includes Enclosures detailing the status of all recommendations and calls for congressional oversight to spur agency action. Despite NRC’s historically strong recommendation implementation rate, GAO expresses concern about inertia in these priority areas. As security, environmental, and fiscal challenges mount, the GAO’s message is clear: the time to act is now.

This blog post is a summary of GAO Report GAO-25-108097, authored by Gene L. Dodaro, Comptroller General of the United States, and publicly released in May 2025. The full report is available at https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-108097.

Disclaimer: This blog post is intended for informational purposes only and does not guarantee the accuracy of the summarized content. It does not constitute legal advice.