In an interview Tuesday with the Exchange Monitor, the chair of the The Nuclear Regulatory Commission hit back against another commissioner’s charges that a long-awaited decommissioning rulemaking proved the agency’s regulatory capture.
“[O]ne of the things that’s getting out there in the aether is that somehow the agency’s taken on kind of a laissez-faire approach to decommissioning,” NRC chairman Christopher Hanson told Exchange Monitor in a video interview. “I’m worried that the public will be under the impression that a reactor shuts down, and not only does the licensee walk away, but the NRC walks away too.”
On Nov. 2, after seven years of work, NRC voted 2-1 to approve proposed changes to its rule for decommissioning power plants. The changes are aimed at lowering regulatory barriers for nuclear power plant operators transitioning their sites into the decommissioning phase.
Among the changes, the NRC would allow licensees to do away with agency-mandated safety and emergency preparedness protocols at nuclear plants that become unnecessary when the site is under decommissioning.
These and other tweaks prompted a tweetstorm from the oft-vocal Commissioner Jeff Baran, who used the term “laissez-faire” in his written dissent about the rule. Baran argued that the new rule “tilt[s] the regulation” of nuclear decommissioning towards industry and away from NRC.
“We need to change course and produce a balanced rule that respects the interests of a broad range of stakeholders, including states, local communities, and workers,” Baran said in a Nov. 2 Twitter thread.
“[N]othing could be further from the truth,” Hanson said Tuesday. The proposed rule is informed by “a long history” of experience with the reduced hazards of a nuclear power plant once it’s been shut down. The rule is “focused on safety, and what we’ve learned about safety and decommissioning these facilities safely and securely over time,” he said.
“Previously, what we had was a framework where decommissioning reactors were under the same regulations as operating reactors, and they had to get a series of exemptions,” Hanson said. “Well, regulating by exemption isn’t particularly efficient, or effective,” he said.
Hanson said that NRC remains involved at reactor sites even after they shut down. The agency requires plant licensees to submit a post-shutdown decommissioning activities report (PSDAR) within two years after their reactors cease operations. NRC staff are also onsite for decommissioning activities, spent fuel loading campaigns and reactor component packaging and disposal, Hanson said.
“It’s a very hands-on process,” Hanson said.
NRC first directed its staff to start working on the proposed decommissioning rule in 2014. The rule was initially supposed to be published in 2019, but was delayed until this year.
Corrected 12/01/2021 4:40 p.m. Eastern time to reflect that the PSDAR must be submitted to NRC within two years after a nuclear reactor shuts down.
