Senate committee postpones vote on NRC nominee Marzano until after election

The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works postponed its vote on the nomination of Matthew Marzano to serve as a member of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission until after the presidential election Nov. 5.

The vote had previously been scheduled to take place during a committee business meeting at 10 am Sept. 25.

The vote is now rescheduled for Nov. 13, a week after the election.

The committee’s notice, distributed after 5 pm ET Sept. 24, did not give a reason for the schedule change. A committee staff member was not immediately available for comment.

President Joe Biden in July nominated Marzano, an Idaho National Laboratory official detailed to the committee, to become an NRC commissioner. His confirmation would give the commission a full complement of five members for the first time in more than a year.

Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, the senior Republican on the committee, and some other GOP members expressed concerns about Marzano’s nomination during a hearing Sept. 11, though none said specifically that they planned to vote against him. In contrast, Democratic committee chairman Senator Tom Carper of Delaware and other Democrats expressed strong support for Biden’s nominee.

Senator Dan Sullivan, a Republican from Alaska, challenged Marzano’s qualifications during the hearing, and quoted Ted Nordhaus of the Breakthrough Institute as saying that Marzano’s appointment was “straight up patronage” from Biden, and from Carper for his former advisor on the committee. Nordhaus in a blog post asked rhetorically if Marzano might be “the most underqualified NRC nominee ever.”

Sullivan told Marzano he had “concern that your experience is not up to par.”

In response Marzano cited his experience as a senior reactor operator at Constellation Energy’s Braidwood nuclear plant in Illinois, as well as his service as a civilian instructor with the US Department of Energy’s naval nuclear propulsion program. He also previously worked on the South Carolina Electric & Gas project, eventually abandoned, to build a new reactor at SCE&G’s Summer nuclear plant.