NASHVILLE – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects on Aug. 30 to publish the proposed update of regulations for nuclear power plants transitioning from operations to decommissioning, according to its latest schedule.
The completed rule would go to the agency’s signature authority – the commission itself – a year later, followed by publication in the Federal Register on March 15, 2021.
At the time the decommissioning rulemaking was initiated in 2015, it was scheduled to be completed this year – though even then NRC officials acknowledged that schedule could be difficult to meet.
“It has been going slower at the NRC than we would like, I’ll be honest with you,” Maria Korsnick, president and CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute, said Monday at the ExchangeMonitor’s Decommissioning Strategy Forum.
She said NEI, the Washington, D.C.-based trade group for the nuclear industry, is working with the NRC to move the process forward as quickly as possible.
An NRC spokesman on Monday said only that the commission continues to review the proposed rules package for potential revisions.
The commission in May 2018 received the draft rules, which are broadly aimed at freeing nuclear power operators from the need to apply for expensive license amendments or regulatory exemptions for operational rules that become extraneous as a plant closes and proceeds through decommissioning.
Among the regulatory revisions, the draft package would over time reduce requirements for emergency preparedness, physical security, cybersecurity, and on- and off-site insurance. Plant licensees would also no longer automatically require an exemption to use their decommissioning trust funds for management of spent reactor fuel.
“My view of the rule is that’s it’s overall pretty properly focused. There’s a remarkable difference between an operating nuclear power plant and one that is entering into decommissioning, so I think it’s appropriate that the agency … undertook this rulemaking,” Larry Camper, a nuclear consultant and former NRC senior manager, said at the conference.
Camper said he had spoken recently with NRC Commissioner David Wright, who was confirmed by the Senate and sworn into office in May 2018. Wright noted the large amount of material he needed to “come to grips with” upon joining the commission.
“So there’s a huge workload up there, a backlog, as well as a change in commissioners. Those things take time, and that’s the reality,” Camper said.
