(rant/)
What bugs me is that this kind of costly change can get pushed through without any obvious kind of peer review.
It was an openly made proposal, and the substantiation was just that simple. The manufacturer, the authority on cables, said that there was no difference in the insulation between NM and SER, and so they should abide by the same rules.
Let someone prove that SE cables installed to code were burning out between terminations, or the excess heat they gave off ignited surrounding materials, or ...
I've seen bad terminations melt insulation of a #12 on a 20A. I have seen undamaged #14 on a 20A that had not been loaded heavily. Does that make it safe?
...that there really are a lot of places in homes that reach over 60? C on a regular basis (the hottest attic I've ever been in was 61? C and it was exceptionally hot due to inadequate ventilation) or even that the insulation broke down at a high enough rate to warrant the change.
That's not the temperature rating of the conductor, that's the ambient temperature around the conductor. Look at the correction factors below 310.16. For a 60?C attic, you would need at least a 75?C-rated conductor and it would only be worth 58% of what it would be worth normally.
When you put 25A through a #14 NM or THHN conductor, the conductor is supposed to reach 90?C, and the insulation is supposed to withstand that. For NM, they have decided that we should not expose buildings to that temperature from that wiring method, and that the conductor should never exceed 60?.