The five commissioners of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the five commissioners of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission are scheduled to sit down together on Oct. 22 for a joint public meeting from 1:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. at NRC headquarters in Rockville, Maryland. The NRC announced it in an advisory dated Oct. 20 listing three subjects: grid reliability, nuclear power plants and cyber security.
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The session is open to the public in person and by webcast. It continues a pattern of regular joint meetings between the two agencies that, FERC says, goes back two decades. The NRC advisory lists the subjects as grid reliability, managing load increases, operating and new nuclear power plants, and cyber security, and says staff from both agencies and NERC will brief the commissioners.
Who will be in the room
The NRC’s advisory 26-033-A says staff from both agencies and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, known as NERC, will brief the commissioners. Those wanting to attend in person are directed to contact Wesley Held at the NRC; anyone else can watch live at the NRC webcast site.
A notice and agenda filed in FERC’s docket AD06-6-000 names the participants. For FERC, they are Chairman Laura V. Swett and Commissioners David Rosner, Lindsay S. See, Judy W. Chang and David LaCerte. For the NRC, they are Chairman Ho K. Nieh and Commissioners David A. Wright, Bradley R. Crowell, Matthew J. Marzano and Douglas W. Weaver. NERC will be represented by Mark Lauby and Fritz Hirst. The notice names the Commissioners Hearing Room as the venue, while the agenda lists a first-floor conference room, so attendees should confirm the room with the NRC.
The afternoon opens with 15 minutes of introductions and opening statements, from 1:00 to 1:15 p.m. After that, the three agency presentations in the middle block total 60 minutes of briefings against 45 minutes of scheduled questions, which gives the commissioners nearly as much time to probe as staff have to present.
Grid reliability and load growth
The middle block of the afternoon, from 1:15 to 3:00 p.m., covers grid reliability, nuclear plants and other topics, and it opens with NERC. According to the meeting agenda, Lauby has 20 minutes for an update on data center registration and Reliability Standards.
FERC follows with its own 20 minutes from Deepak Ramlatchan and Jason Feuerstein on managing large loads and on generator interconnection procedures. FERC’s announcement of the meeting describes one theme as managing load increases, the phrase the agenda unpacks into large loads and the rules for connecting new generators to the grid. NERC’s two named participants are Lauby and Hirst. Each presentation is followed by a 15-minute question period, which is where the commissioners can press staff on how fast demand is growing and what that means for reliability.
Nuclear plants and the NRC’s own agenda
The NRC takes its 20 minutes in four parts. Jacob Zimmerman covers an introduction and the agency’s reorganization. Jen Whitman discusses activities under executive order 14300 and NRC reform efforts, the phrasing used in the agenda, which abbreviates the order as EO14300 and gives no further description. Mahmoud Jardaneh gives a power reactor program overview covering the operating fleet, restarting decommissioning plants, power uprate readiness and license renewal efficiencies. Josh Borromeo closes with advanced reactor licensing and review optimization.
The agenda is the only place those four topics are spelled out; the advisory itself says only that the meeting covers operating and new nuclear power plants.
The final block, from 3:00 to 3:30 p.m., is devoted to cyber security. FERC’s Alan Herd is scheduled to cover cybersecurity updates along with Critical Infrastructure Protection audits and a lessons-learned report, and the NRC’s Jim Beardsley is listed for cybersecurity program guidance updates, research on emerging cyber issues, and trends in cybersecurity inspection and oversight. Each agency has 10 minutes, followed by questions.
The advisory does not mention press access or credentialing. The NRC’s Office of Public Affairs can be reached at (301) 415-8200 or [email protected], and the meeting is also listed on the FERC events calendar under the same docket. The agenda’s cyber block lists 35 minutes of segments in a 30-minute slot, so the final session may run short on questions.
No decisions are scheduled. The format is briefings and questions, so the practical output of the afternoon will be what the commissioners say in response and any follow-up either agency chooses to announce afterward. Readers following the topic can check the NRC advisory and the FERC docket for any change to the Oct. 22 schedule, since both agencies list the time, place and topics there. The Oct. 20 advisory is numbered 26-033-A in the NRC’s 2026 release series, and the NRC’s list shows an earlier advisory, 26-032-A on Oct. 7, about commissioners hosting a separate public meeting in Texas, so the Oct. 22 session is not the only commission-level public meeting the agency has set this month.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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