Sixty four lawmakers called out what they said were six problems with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s draft rule for licensing advanced reactors and, in a July 14 letter, asked for a fix.
Safety requirements in the NRC’s proposed rule are so strict that they will prevent commission staff from licensing new reactor designs quickly, said 20 U.S. Senators and 44 U.S. Representatives in a letter published this week by Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
“[I]t is critical and urgent that the new framework is established with the capacity to license the large volume of applications necessary to meet our energy and national security priorities, provide grid reliability, and achieve our environmental goals,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter to NRC Chairman Christopher Hanson.
NRC’s decision to create two regulatory paths for license, one that requires a probabilistic risk assessment, and one that does not, tops the lawmakers’ list of half a dozen problematic bullet points about the rule. A probabilistic risk assessment is a lengthy analysis of potentially disastrous chains of events.
The dual-path structure of the rule “limits the proposed rule’s overall benefit,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter.
NRC estimates it will publish the final version of the rule, Risk-Informed, Technology-Inclusive Regulatory Framework for Advanced Reactors, in July 2025. Commission staff should present the final rule and a package of supporting documents to the commission in December, according to the NRC’s website.
