The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must bill $805.9 million to its licensees for operations in the current fiscal year, the large majority of its annual budget.
The nuclear-industry regulator has a total budget authority of $940.1 million for fiscal 2017, under the omnibus appropriations budget passed in May, according to the NRC’s final fee rule, published on Friday in the Federal Register. That amount encompasses $23 million in carryover funds.
A number of billing and collections adjustments, including the 10-percent of agency funding provided annually through congressional appropriations, brings the necessary fee recovery amount to just under $806 million. That is divided further into $297.3 million in fees to fund specific service to licensees and license applicants and $508.6 million in annual billing to licensees.
Annual fees for spent fuel storage and reactor decommissioning licensees will drop by 4.6 percent for the budget year ending Sept. 30, from $24 million to $23 million. That will cover 122 facilities.
“In comparison to FY 2016, the decrease in annual fee is mainly the result of a decrease in budgetary resources for storage licensing and rulemaking activities and an increase in 10 CFR part 170 estimated billings due to the application for a consolidated interim storage facility for Holtec/Eddy Lea Energy and the technical review of an application submitted by Waste Control Specialists,” according to the Federal Register notice.
New Jersey-based Holtec International, in cooperation with the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, on March 31 applied for an NRC license for a facility in southeastern New Mexico with capacity to store 120,000 metric tons of spent fuel from U.S. commercial reactors. Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists in April asked the NRC to suspend review of its application for a 40,000-metric-ton facility in West Texas, pending completion of a merger with EnergySolutions that was blocked by a federal judge last month.
More than 75,000 metric tons of used fuel is now stored on-site at nuclear plants around the nation. That amount rises by about 2,000 metric tons annually while the Energy Department works to meet its legal mandate to build a permanent repository for the waste.
