As Chairman of the NRC, Macfarlane prioritized the geological and operational lessons learned from the North Anna and Fukushima incidents, as well as improving the NRC's communication with public stakeholders and paying more attention to the back end of the fuel cycle in an era when more U.S. nuclear power plants were being decommissioned than built. She also pushed to make the NRC a more family-friendly workplace. Given that she had raised questions a decade earlier about the suitability of the Yucca Mountain site for long-term geologic disposal of high-level nuclear waste, supporters of Yucca Mountain expected her to stall NRC licensing of Yucca Mountain, but she complied with a court order that ruled her predecessor's actions illegal and directed the NRC to continue its licensing review until it had spent down the funds made available for this purpose by Congress.