The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has issued annual letters to the nation’s 95 operating commercial nuclear reactors, regarding their performance in 2025. The 95 reactors currently in the Reactor Oversight Process include Palisades in Michigan, which returned to operational status in 2025 but has yet to restart. Of these, 90 reached the highest performance category in safety and security including the Waterford plant in Louisiana, which resolved issues of low safety significance during the year. These reactors remain under the NRC’s “baseline” inspection programme, involving thousands of inspection hours for each reactor.
Five reactors were in the second performance category for 2025, as they need to resolve one or two items of low safety significance. For this performance level, regulatory oversight includes additional inspection and follow-up of corrective actions. These five plants are Hope Creek (New Jersey), South Texas Project unit 2 (Texas), VC Summer (South Carolina), and Watts Bar 1&2 (Tennessee).
There were no reactors in the third or fourth performance categories, which would trigger additional NRC oversight, or the fifth performance category, which requires a reactor to shut down to address performance problems.
