Bruce Berson is a Senior Nuclear Safety Consultant at Talisman. He retired from the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December, 2006 and was reemployed by the NRC as a consultant until early 2009, prior to joining Talisman. He has over 30 years experience in regulatory and policy activities in the commercial nuclear industry. Since his retirement from the NRC he was a consultant to the NRC Office of the General Counsel reviewing guidance documents for the new reactor program and subsequently to the NRC Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation in developing and implementing enhanced guidance for the NRC technical staff to improve the quality of license renewal safety evaluation reports.
Mr. Berson retired from the NRC as the Regional Counsel for NRC Region III, a position he held for over 22 years. As such, he was responsible for advising regional management on the whole range of legal and policy issues affecting the Region and working with NRC headquarters officials at all levels. He was deeply involved in essentially all significant enforcement actions involving power reactors and materials licensees located in the Region, including civil penalties, Orders, license suspensions and revocations, wrongdoing (NRC Office of Investigation reports) and whistleblower cases during that time. In addition, he was actively involved in the review and evaluation of allegations received by the Region of potential safety issues at licensees. Mr. Berson also was responsible for conducting numerous internal reviews and investigations of personnel-related issues not addressed by the NRC Office of the Inspector General and recommending appropriate action.
Prior to becoming the Region III counsel, Mr. Berson was the regulatory affairs manager for a private sector consulting consortium providing technical and policy advice to the Department of Energy headquarters on the siting of a high level nuclear waste repository. He also spent seven years as an NRC attorney in its headquarters office as a hearing attorney for licensing nuclear power plants, as a contracts attorney, and as a regulations attorney. Mr. Berson has a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Illinois, a M.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Minnesota, and a J.D. from the University of Illinois.