A Nuclear Regulatory Commission rulemaking intended to streamline the agency’s decommissioning processes remains on schedule, an NRC official said last week.
Reactor Decommissioning Branch Chief Bruce Watson, who appeared at the ExchangeMonitor’s 2016 RadWaste Summit in Las Vegas, said the NRC will look to issue a final rule in 2019. The next milestone is scheduled for November, when the NRC expects to release the rule’s regulatory basis phase for public comment, he said, followed by a rule proposal in April 2018.
“I do believe we’re on track,” Watson said. “We’ve got a large team working on it. Part of these lessons learned that we’re going to be publishing from our decommissioning working group serve as a lot of the basis for the rule changes. So I think it’s a matter of just following the process. It just takes years to get the rulemaking done, and it does allow a lot of opportunities for public involvement.”
The rulemaking carries a particular focus on reducing the need for regulatory exemptions for nuclear reactor sites. The NRC currently issues safety exemptions for nuclear plants as they move into decommissioning because the agency believes inactive facilities pose fewer dangers than active sites. These exemptions have drawn backlash from local communities, particularly in Vermont, where state officials unsuccessfully petitioned the NRC to reverse the decision to allow exemptions at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant.
Watson said the rulemaking also includes a re-evaluation of the present regulation for SAFSTOR decommissioning, whieh allows operators 60 years to finish the process . Some in communities near nuclear plants believe that time frame is too long, Watson said. He said the basis for the 60-year period is that active radioactive decay takes 50 years, while it takes another 10 years to complete decommissioning. This length of time also allows a plant’s decommissioning trust fund to accumulate enough capital to complete the process.
One concern is that institutional knowledge dissipates over such a long time span.
“People generally retire, and there’s some generational issues,” Watson said. “It’s a fact of life that after a generation or so people tend to forget.”
