The Nuclear Regulatory Commission thanked Massachusetts’s senior senator for outlining his reservations about a proposed agency rulemaking aimed at streamlining the decommissioning process for nuclear power plants, according to a recent letter.
“We appreciate and share your interest in ensuring that the NRC has a safe, effective and efficient decommissioning process for nuclear power plants,” commission chairman Christopher Hanson told Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in a letter dated Oct. 5 and made public Thursday.
The chairman was responding to an Aug. 30 letter from the senator outlining his grievances with NRC’s proposed decommissioning rulemaking that, if made final, would reduce some agency-mandated physical security and emergency preparedness requirements for operators decommissioning shuttered plants.
Hanson assured Markey that NRC would “review, consider and respond to” the senator’s concerns as well as the 2,000 or so public comments it received over the course of a roughly six-month comment period.
In his August letter, Markey said the proposed decommissioning rule “falls short,” in particular because it does not require NRC to approve nuclear plant operators’ post-shutdown decommissioning activities reports (PSDARs), which outline the process for dismantling shuttered plants. As it stands, the commission reviews PSDARs but does not have to formally approve them.
“Formal NRC approval of a PSDAR should be the bare minimum of public accountability,” Markey said. “Communities surrounding decommissioning nuclear power plants deserve to know that the agency charged with ensuring the safety of nuclear power plants and their environs has conducted a full environmental and safety evaluation of a plant site based on the latest science and plant circumstances.”
NRC should also take steps to improve public participation in the decommissioning process, the senator said.
Markey, who has an anti-nuclear bent, has repeatedly criticized the proposed decommissioning rule in recent months, telling Hanson during a December hearing in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that NRC “has decided that the best way to shield itself from criticism around the decommissioning process is to take itself out of the process.”
The decommissioning rule, which NRC’s top regulators approved in November on a 2-1 vote, has also stirred up some controversy within the commission itself. Commissioner Jeff Baran voted against the approval, arguing in his November dissent that the proposed changes are “laissez-faire” and that they “tip the regulation” in favor of industry and away from the agency.
Meanwhile, it could be two years before NRC actually publishes its decommissioning rule. The agency has projected that the proposed changes could be approved and published by May 2024 or so, assuming a favorable vote from NRC’s five-member executive committee.
