The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has unanimously voted to cut off a potential rule that would have required commercial nuclear facilities to promptly remediate radioactive contamination of surrounding ground, subsurface, and groundwater while still in operation.
The three sitting commissioners voted in November and December 2016 to end the rulemaking. The notice was posted to the Federal Register on Oct. 6.
Nuclear facilities licensed by the NRC must now clean up all residual radioactivity prior to license termination to “levels that provide reasonable assurance that no member of the public will receive a dose from the decommissioned facility greater than 25 millirem (mrem) per year,” according to the agency notice.
At the commission’s direction, NRC staff in 2007 began studying a proposed rule that would have required companies to begin remediation of radioactive contamination in the short term instead of waiting until after the plant closed down. The official rulemaking process began in July 2011.
Data was collected from coast to coast for three years before being analyzed to determine the rule’s effectiveness. In October 2016, NRC staff recommended the commissioners make no changes to existing rules.
NRC staff told the commissioners in the report that while the proposal was intended to prevent facilities from becoming “legacy sites,” it was unlikely to have any reasonable impact on protection of public health and safety. A facility becomes a legacy site when its residual radioactivity fails to meet NRC standards for radiation exposure and requires further remediation and monitoring before it can be reopened for development and use.
The NRC said the prompt remediation rule would no longer be pursued and a new announcement would be made in the event the commission decides to pursue a new corresponding mandate in the future.
