The NRC is conducting what it calls a review and wholesale revision of its regulations, consistent with Executive Order 14300, Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This proposed rule covers reactor licensing, decommissioning and operational oversight, and is one of several efforts under section 5 of the order.

Wholesale revision is the agency's own description. This is a pass across the procedures that govern how a reactor gets licensed, how it is overseen while it runs, and how it comes apart at the end.

The docket list shows how much is being consolidated. Two petitions for rulemaking and four separate prior dockets fold into one proposed rule, some of them open since 2015.

Draft regulatory guides are out alongside it. Those say what the agency will accept as compliance, and they are frequently where the operational change actually lands.