The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday it is considering canceling a nearly 12-year-old rulemaking proceeding on security requirements for the dry storage pads used to hold used fuel from nuclear power reactors.
The rulemaking, formally initiated in 2007 and on hold since 2015, is intended to further strengthen protections against the intentional release of radiation by terrorists.
In a meeting with stakeholders, NRC officials laid out three options that are being studied: proceeding with the rulemaking solely to codify security orders issued for independent spent fuel storage installations (ISFSI) following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001; fully discontinuing the ISFSI rulemaking; and ending the rulemaking, but issuing regulatory guidance on the matter.
Agency staff will next submit a paper to the commission outlining the options and a recommended approach. The commission will have final say. There is not yet a schedule to deliver the report, staff said Friday.
Only two outside stakeholders offered input during the 40-minute meeting Wednesday. The Nuclear Energy Institute, the trade association for the nuclear industry, came down firmly in favor of ending the rulemaking – noting it has already been postponed for nearly four years. Industry has demonstrated it can secure its storage facilities, said Rod McCullum, NEI senior director for used fuel and decommissioning.
The nongovernmental Union of Concerned Scientists urged the agency to proceed with a comprehensive regulatory update. “This is a stupid and a dangerous decision,” said Edwin Lyman, acting director of the organization’s Nuclear Safety Project.
As of April 2019, the NRC counted 65 nuclear reactor sites with a general licensed ISFSI, along with 15 specific licensed storage installations either at or away from a reactor. There were 34 states with at least one ISFSI.
In October 2002, the NRC issued separate orders requiring general and site-specific licensees to comply with additional security requirements for their storage facilities. The actual security directives were not made public. Orders for a number of nuclear power plants were issued from 2003 to 2006.
In August 2007, NRC staff proposed a rulemaking for “development of new, risk-informed, performance-based security requirements applicable to all ISFSI licensees to enhance existing security requirements.” The commission signed off on the proceeding that December.
The process was intended to update security regulations and broadly apply the security orders to all ISFSIs, no matter where located or what license type they held. It would also encompass the findings of subsequent security assessments of various types of dry storage casks.
In a December 2009 draft regulatory basis for the rulemaking, staff said it would apply both to ISFSIs and “monitored retrievable storage” facilities that could hold spent fuel or high-level waste.
“The NRC’s specific objectives for this rulemaking are to: (1) update the ISFSI security regulations to improve the consistency and clarity of Part 73 regulations for both types of ISFSI licensees (i.e., general and specific), to reflect current Commission thinking on security requirements, and to incorporate lessons learned from security inspections and Force-on-Force (FOF) evaluations conducted since these regulations were last updated; (2) to make generically applicable requirements similar to those imposed on ISFSI licensees by the post-9/11 security orders; and (3) to use a risk-informed and performance based structure in updating the ISFSI and MRS security regulations,” staff wrote at the time.
“The staff received significant comments on the draft regulatory basis from a range of stakeholders, primarily opposing the staff’s approach to the rulemaking,” Duane White, NRC technical staff lead on the rulemaking, said during Wednesday’s meeting.
In October 2015, the commission approved a staff recommendation to postpone the rulemaking for up to five years to allow time to consider the stakeholder input and developments in the industry. The latter, White said, included growing interest in consolidated interim storage of used fuel from nuclear power reactors.
Since then, the NRC has begun reviewing license applications for interim storage sites in Texas and New Mexico that could centralize the radioactive material now spread around the United States. Such facilities could enable the U.S. Department of Energy to finally meet its long-delayed congressional mandate to remove used fuel from nuclear power plants (the deadline for that to start was Jan. 31, 1998).
Last year, as the end of the five-year suspension approached, the commission told staff to focus on a tightened rulemaking that would solely codify the directives of the post-Sept. 11 security directives to ISFSI licensees. “Basically take the orders and put them into the rule,” Shana Helton, director of the NRC Division of Physical and Cyber Security Policy, said during the meeting.
That option is estimated to cost the NRC and industry $1.1 million, according to White’s presentation. The agency would have to develop new rules, evaluate exemption requests from licensees, and issue new security orders. The industry would face expenses for submitting the exemption requests for agency review.
“One of the big goals of providing rulemaking is that we would be able to provide openness and clarity and reliability in our regulatory process and also get the opportunity for public comment on the security requirements,” White said.
McCullum said that $1.1 million estimate was low, assuming it incorporates spending by industry. The NRC and its licensees both face funding constraints and a backlog of other rulemakings, he said.
“I think the fact that you have been on pause for five years really says a lot about which option you should choose,” according to McCullum. “I think if there was a pressing securing need for a rulemaking here that you would have needed to act within five years.”
Fully eliminating the rulemaking would prevent any further costs, while the third option is estimated to cost $320,000 for preparing and issuing the regulatory guidance – agency directives to licensees on implementing specific rules.
Lyman said the NRC should proceed with a full rulemaking, rather than even the limited process that is among the options listed by staff. A comprehensive process is needed to address lessons learned on security since the initial orders were issued nearly 17 years ago, he said.
“We object strongly to that direction,” he said. “We think that the commission is acting in an arbitrary and capricious and reckless manner by ignoring what vulnerabilities were identified more than 10 years ago in the current ISFSI requirements and the current dry-cask storage designs.”
