The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is abandoning its inquiry into whether it should double the license renewal period for nuclear power plants to 40 years from 20 years, agency staff recommended this week.
Because 90% of existing reactors already have a 20-year license extension allowing them to run for 60 years, a 40-year extension period would have allowed some nuclear plants to get a license to operate for up to 100 years, NRC said.
Instead of allowing that, NRC should, among other things, “[p]eriodically query the industry to determine their interest and timing to pursue operation to 100 years, so that the staff can identify the need and timeframe to initiate development of guidance documents which would support 100 years of plant operation,” the report says.
Despite abandoning its study of a 40-year extension, the commission will continue to look into an aging management framework for nuclear plants and work with industry to prepare for a future discussion about allowing reactors to run for a century, the report said.
An industry group appeared ambivalent about the prospect of a 40-year license extension, according to the NRC staff report.
During a virtual public meeting the NRC hosted in February to gather public comments about longer license extensions, the Washington-based Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) said it “neither supports nor opposes” the activity.
In a January meeting also hosted by NRC, NEI said it didn’t know of any utilities looking to extend their nuclear plant licenses to 100 years. The trade group “expressed prudency in continuing relevant research on aging to extend our current level of knowledge, given the lead time needed to implement and complete research activities,” the report said.
NRC said it first started looking into the feasibility of a 40-year license extension after a 2020 meeting with Energy Harbor, during which the utility company proposed a double license renewal for Perry Nuclear Power Plant in Ohio that would have allowed the plant to run for a combined 80 years.
