WASHINGTON — Gregory B. Jaczko, whose three-year tenure as chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been marked by bitter battles with colleagues and with Congress, announced Monday that he would step down as soon as a successor was confirmed.

The White House said it would name a successor “soon,” but it is unlikely that anyone will be confirmed to succeed Dr. Jaczko for many months, ensuring continued turmoil at the deeply divided agency. The commission’s inspector general is preparing a report to be issued in coming weeks that is expected to repeat some of the charges of mismanagement and verbal abuse of subordinates that have isolated Dr. Jaczko from other members.

Dr. Jaczko, chairman since May 2009 and the longest-serving member of the five-member commission, was an outsider and a maverick when he joined the panel more than seven years ago. He has drawn sharp criticism for helping to end the government’s consideration of a proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert and for assuming some emergency powers at the commission after the triple meltdown of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi reactors in March 2011.

He sought to address some longstanding safety problems at the 104 nuclear power reactors in the United States, but with a background in nuclear physics and nuclear policy and not in the nuclear industry, Dr. Jaczko was viewed with skepticism and mistrust by some industry insiders.