The Nuclear Regulatory Commission reports that 90 of the nation’s 95 operational commercial nuclear reactors met the highest category of performance in the 2025 oversight process.
The other five fell into the second performance category — indicating findings of low safety significance — and will face an elevated level of regulatory oversight including additional inspections and follow-up on corrective actions.
No reactors fell to the third or fourth performance categories, which trigger additional NRC oversight, or the fifth, which prompts a shutdown while problems are addressed.
The March 13 announcement of annual assessments for nuclear plants is a reminder of the level of regulation the NRC applies as it faces pressure by the Trump administration to streamline and speed up its regulatory process to facilitate a dramatic expansion of the U.S. nuclear power sector.
This has prompted concerns about the NRC being able to maintain its independence and its core mission of upholding the safety of aging infrastructure that harnesses potentially dangerous technology to produce 18% of U.S. electricity — 784,781 GWh in 2025.
The five reactors flagged for additional attention are Hope Creek in New Jersey, South Texas Project Unit 2, V.C. Summer in South Carolina and Watts Bar 1 and 2 in Tennessee.
PSEG’s Hope Creek got a notice of violation for “Inadequate Identification and Correction of Water Intrusion into Emergency Diesel Generator Lube Oil System” despite multiple indications of a degraded condition. This resulted in loss of probabilistic risk assessment function greater than the allowed outage time.
STP’s South Texas Project Unit 2 was flagged for “Failure to Establish Adequate Preventative Maintenance Instructions Leading to Multiple Component Failures” that resulted in “a partial loss of offsite power, an unplanned reactor trip, and subsequent loss of a safety-related motor control center during recovery activities.”
TVA’s Watts Bar 1 and Watts Bar 2 were dinged for “Failure to Maintain Public Address System” as procedure dictated. From February 2019 to June 2025, TVA failed to characterize as “loss of function” the continuous and progressive failure of multiple speakers important to emergency response and failed to take corrective action or implement compensatory measures.
All of these were determined to be of low safety significance — a white violation, the second-lowest color on a scale that runs from green to white to yellow to red. Other findings at each of the four reactors were classified green — non-violations or non-cited violations.
The NRC website lists numerous green but no white findings for the fifth reactor, Dominion’s V.C. Summer. The NRC’s March 11 letter to Dominion said V.C. Summer was being placed on the supplemental oversight list with the other four reactors because of a “white” finding in the third quarter of 2025.
This might be the “Inadequate Maintenance Strategy Resulting in Turbine-Driven Emergency Feedwater Pump Inoperability,” but that is listed as an “apparent violation” on the NRC website, with no color code.
The “green” findings at the five reactors span a wide range of failures or missteps. They include:
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- Failure to Control a Locked High Radiation Area.
- Incorrect Rod Control Setup Resulted in Unanticipated Control Rod Withdrawal.
- Failure to Maintain Quality of Lubricants.
- Degradation of Main Generator Current Transformer 152C Causes Automatic Turbine and Reactor Trip.
- Change to Emergency Diesel Generator Operating Procedure Without Obtaining a License Amendment.
- Failure to Demonstrate Effective Control of a Maintenance Rule Scoped System.
- Failure to Translate High Head Safety Injection Pump Maximum Shutoff Head into Motor Operated Valve Thrust Calculations.
- Failure to Remove Rubber Shipping Grommet During Emergency Feedwater Pump Governor Installation.
The NRC deemed all the “green” findings notable enough to report, even if they were not worthy of citations or increased oversight.
Individually and in the aggregate, they are deemed not a threat to safety. But as a whole, they hint at the vast range of potential human errors in these huge, complex systems and point to the degree of scrutiny the NRC applies in seeking and documenting those failures.
President Donald Trump took aim at the NRC’s layers of regulation in one of four May 2025 executive orders intended to streamline nuclear power development. (See Trump Orders Nuclear Regulatory Acceleration, Streamlining.)
The order that focuses on the NRC (EO 14300) seems to be aimed at expediting the approval of new reactors and technology, a stated priority for Trump. But it is blunt in criticizing the entire approach of the nuclear watchdog, as when the president cited “a myopic policy of minimizing even trivial risks.”
He wrote: “Instead of efficiently promoting safe, abundant nuclear energy, the NRC has instead tried to insulate Americans from the most remote risks without appropriate regard for the severe domestic and geopolitical costs of such risk aversion.”
And: “Beginning today, my administration will reform the NRC, including its structure, personnel, regulations and basic operations.”
Where this directive translates to action and what it means for routine processes such as the annual assessments for 95 nuclear reactors remain to be seen, but clarity may be coming.
The baseline inspections now total 2,012 hours per year, according to a Feb. 6 NRC memo recommending revisions. Attachments to the memo include a specific 38% suggested reduction in hours, organizational changes and potential changes to more-than-minor findings.
These last changes could include reducing the number of publicly reported green findings in a way that would not reduce their effectiveness but would reduce the chances of the public getting the wrong impression about the safety implications of those findings, or about the performance of the reactor’s license holder.
The NRC’s website indicates three of 28 planned revisions of rules in response to EO 14300 had been completed as of March 6.
And in January, the Department of Energy eliminated or rewrote numerous safety rules including ALARA, a longstanding core principle that dictated nuclear operators must keep radiation exposure As Low As Reasonably Achievable.
As this wholesale revision moves forward, cutting-edge technology and Cold War-era infrastructure are mingling in NRC’s purview: Dozens of advanced reactor designs are in various stages of completion while nuclear plants that went on the drawing boards in the 1960s and 1970s continue to operate with the equipment and technology of that era.
Constellation’s Limerick Clean Energy Center made news in January with the announcement the NRC had approved the nation’s first-ever wholesale replacement of a nuclear plant’s analog safety systems with a single digital system. (See NRC Approves 1st Digital Conversion of Nuclear Plant Safety Controls.)
This is all the more remarkable when considering that even at 40 years old, Limerick is among the newer plants operating in the U.S. — commercial nuclear power construction all but ceased in the early 1990s.
Operators of some the oldest existing facilities are considering relicensing requests that could extend their operating lifespans to 80 years.
So how did the oldest components of the aging fleet fare in the NRC’s annual assessment?
Constellation’s Nine Mile Point Unit 1 entered commercial service Dec. 1, 1969, and its R.A. Ginna on June 1, 1970. Both recorded capacity factors above 94% in 2022-2024, compared with a national median of 91%. And neither got a writeup from the NRC in 2025.
Nine Mile Point Unit 1 got a handful of “green” findings, none of which were cited as violations. Ginna got just one “green” finding — a non-cited violation for failing to rectify a grease packing condition in a valve actuator the vendor had warned about.
On the other end of the scale, Southern Nuclear’s Vogtle 3 and Vogtle 4 are the newest reactors (and the only “new” ones) in the U.S. fleet, entering commercial operation on July 31, 2023, and April 29, 2024, respectively.
Vogtle 3 got two non-cited “greens,” but it was the same finding reported under two categories.
Vogtle 4 got three different “green” findings a combined eight times under three categories, none resulting in citations.
One of them stands out as a strikingly low-tech flub in such a high-tech setting: propping open fire doors without maintaining a fire watch.
The number of reactors placed on expanded supervision in 2025 is slightly less than the annual average in the 2020s. Nine were flagged in 2024, six in 2023, six in 2022, two in 2021 and four in 2020. Of those, one was placed in the third performance category and the rest in the second performance category.
