Is Matthew Marzano the Most Under Qualified NRC Nominee Ever?

Biden Chooses Patronage and Business As Usual Over Meritocracy, Modernization, and Diversity

By Ted Nordhaus

Cognitive dissonance within the Democratic Party about nuclear energy continues to undermine the Party’s climate and clean energy commitments. The Biden Administration continues to say all the right things about nuclear energy. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has celebrated the two new AP1000 reactors at the Vogtle plant in Georgia and said that we need 198 more like them by 2050 to hit the Administration’s net zero target. Democrats in Congress have supported multiple pieces of legislation investing in new nuclear technology and directing the NRC to modernize its regulatory licensing framework in anticipation of a new generation of advanced nuclear reactors.

But when it comes to installing leaders at the NRC actually committed to regulatory reform and modernization, the Biden Administration and the powerful, retiring Democratic Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Tom Carper, have repeatedly blanched. First, last spring, Biden nominated then-Commissioner Jeff Baran to a third five year term on the commission. Baran was the last commissioner confirmed by the Senate under former Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid, whose long-standing opposition to the Yucca Mountain waste site led him to oppose virtually all efforts to revitalize nuclear energy. Baran was a consistent obstructionist on the commission, reliably opposing all efforts to seriously reform the agency’s regulatory approach, which has crippled the nuclear sector for a generation.

Thankfully, Baran’s long and public record of obstruction was too much for many Senate Democrats who recognize the need for new nuclear energy. After passing out of the Environment and Public Works committee on a straight party-line vote, Baran’s nomination was never brought to the Senate floor and the Biden Administration quietly refrained from resubmitting it in January. 

But instead of reading the room and submitting a new nominee who is serious about revamping US nuclear regulation to account for the technology’s extraordinary record of safe operations, a new generation of even safer reactors ready for licensing, and the substantial environmental and public health benefits of nuclear energy, Carper, abetted by his old Delaware colleague, Biden, instead found a nominee, Matthew Marzano, with no public record to speak of to put forward as the next commissioner at the NRC. 

The pick is straight up patronage. Carper has made a priority of making sure all of his staff find comfortable sinecures before he retires and now proposes to elevate a young staffer with barely two years experience working in his office, and no significant record of public service prior to that, to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 

Worse, what little experience Marzano has had over the last two years suggests he will not be a voice for reform and modernization on the commission. Marzano’s supporters are touting his role in drafting the Advance Act. But Marzano’s primary role in that effort was killing key provisions of the proposed bill in the Senate, most notably language to modernize the NRC’s mission that directed the agency to consider the benefits of nuclear energy to the national welfare and not take regulatory action that unduly limited those benefits. Those provisions were subsequently restored in the House version of the bill, which was then overwhelmingly approved by Congress, including Senate Democrats. But insofar as Marzano played a significant role in the drafting and passage of the Advance Act, it was as an obstacle to regulatory modernization, not an architect.

Worse still, in choosing Marzano, Carper and Biden passed over a far more qualified and well-vetted Black candidate, Sam McKenzie, a retired radiation health specialist with thirty years experience as a senior manager at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who currently serves as a Democratic state legislator in Tennessee. McKenzie had been fully vetted by the White House Office of Presidential Personnel (OPP). He had made the rounds in Congress. When word leaked out that a nomination was forthcoming, expectation, both in the Senate and among stakeholders was universally that McKenzie would be the pick. The choice of Marzano was a surprise, not only to other members of the Senate, including the Environment and Public Works Committee, but inside the White House, where he had not even been formally vetted by OPP. 

Carper is now pulling out all the stops, asking his colleagues to go along with the nomination out of respect for his long service, a kind of going away present from the gentleman’s club that the Senate, despite the modest progress that it has made toward diversity, remains. But if Marzano is confirmed, he will, without question, be the least qualified commissioner ever seated on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 

All one need do to confirm this is to review the long roster of former commissioners, on the NRC and its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission. The roster of former AEC commissioners included Nobel Laureates, particle physicists, veterans of the Manhattan Project, captains of industry, and senior officials, the Department of Defense,, and the Security and Exchange Commission. 

Since its creation in 1974, the roster of commissioners at the NRC is not quite as exalted. But virtually all have boasted long and distinguished careers in academia, national laboratories, the federal government, the nuclear industry, or the NRC itself. More recently, commission appointments have come disproportionately from the US Senate. But even these commissioners have boasted substantial tenure in senior policy-making roles in the Senate. 

By contrast, Marzano has no senior experience of any sort. He graduated from the University of Florida with a Masters Degree in Nuclear Engineering in 2011, spent three years as a naval reactor operator and engineer, six years as a reactor operator with South Carolina Electric and Gas and Exelon, and two years as a junior member of Carper’s staff. There has been a lot of discussion in recent years of the need for NRC commissioners with more technical expertise, rather than political or policy-making background. But Marzano would seem to represent the worst of both worlds. He brings, at best, garden-variety technical background. There are thousands of professionals within the nuclear industry with similar levels of training and experience. He has no significant managerial experience, no research or publication record of any kind, and a scant two years of policy-making experience, none of it at a senior level. 

But for Carper, all that would appear to be a feature, not a bug. The lesson that Carper appears to have learned is that the problem with Baran was that his long service on the Commission had resulted in an undeniable voting history that was at odds with the Administration’s and Senate Democrats’ publicly stated commitments to nuclear energy and regulatory modernization. Instead of selecting a qualified candidate with a clear commitment to fixing the NRC, he plucked a callow candidate with no public record to speak of from obscurity and proposes to elevate him to a position of high authority. 

In so doing, he would also assure a reliable third vote for the commission’s two Democratic commissioners, whose position on reform at the NRC has been, at times, wobbly, locking in a Democratic majority and assuring that it need not negotiate key rulings with the two minority commissioners for the next three years. That would be unfortunate. 

The commission itself has been a notable contrast to Congress, where bipartisanship on nuclear modernization has been the coin of the realm for the last five years. But with a four-member commission over the last year, the two Democrats and two Republicans have had to work together to make policy. That has brought important progress on efforts to modernize America’s nuclear regulator. Over the last year, the commission has provided clear direction to the staff to fix its flawed proposal for licensing advanced reactors, voted to finalize a long-delayed risk-informed policy for emergency preparedness for small modular reactors, streamlined mandatory hearing procedures, and moved forward with a generic environmental impact statement for advanced reactors—all important steps that had languished in the eighteen months prior.

To be clear, I have no objection to a Democratic majority on the Commission. The process was designed to assure that both parties had representation on the commission and that the commission could act when it was divided. There is no shortage of qualified Democratic candidates for the commission with a demonstrated commitment to modernizing the NRC so that it can deliver the new nuclear technology that Congressional Democrats now overwhelmingly agree that America needs. But for that to happen, the Senate is going to need to insist that the Biden Administration nominate a candidate with a strong background in nuclear technology, management, or policy, and optimally all three. That candidate must be someone capable of bringing independent judgment and leadership to the commission at this critical juncture, as the nation is attempting to commercialize a new generation of reactors in order to achieve critical environmental, public health, energy security, and national security objectives. For his long service in the Senate, Carper deserves a hearty farewell, a resolution from the Senate thanking him for his good work and collegiality, perhaps a gold watch. But the stakes for America’s nuclear sector are far too high to place a wildly underqualified and untested candidate on the commissioner as a valedictory for Carper as he exits the scene.