Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
1/9/2015
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission directed its Staff last week to begin a rulemaking to better address the NRC’s role in regulating decommissioning power plants, with an end date tentatively set for 2019. Currently, the NRC does not have regulations that reflect the decreased security and safety threat posed by a decommissioning reactor. Instead, a series of license amendments is needed to exempt the plants, a step that can prove costly and timely for both utilities and the NRC. The NRC has already approved exemptions for the Kewaunee Power Station, and in a Staff Related Memorandum issued last week, the Commission approved the exemptions reducing security and emergency preparedness requirements requested by Duke Energy Florida for the Crystal River Power Station.
According to the SRM, the Staff should focus on a wide variety of issues in its rulemaking that affect decommissioning plants, including the appropriate amount of NRC involvement in the Post Shutdown Decommissioning Activity Report, as well as the role of state and local government in the process. “This rulemaking should address: issues discussed in SECY-00-0145 such as the graded approach to emergency preparedness; lessons learned from the plants that have already (or are currently)going through the decommissioning process; the advisability of requiring a licensee’s Post Shutdown Decommissioning Activity Report to be approved by NRC; the appropriateness of maintaining the three existing options for decommissioning and the timeframes associated with those options; the appropriate role of state and local governments and non-governmental stakeholders in the decommissioning process; and any other issues deemed relevant by the NRC staff,” the SRM said.
Rulemaking Appropriate to Correct Inefficiencies, Commissioner Say
In the voting record for the decision, all five NRC commissioners supported starting a decommissioning rulemaking at some point. The major reason cited in their comments was that a rulemaking would help solve inefficiencies and predictability problems associated with decommissioning. “After reviewing the history of decommissioning oversight at the NRC, prior Commission direction following the closure of several operating plants in the 1990s, and the NRC staff briefings I have received on decommissioning, my view is that regulating by exemption for permanently shut down plants is not the right approach for the future,” Commissioner Jeffrey Baran said. “Regulation by exemption results in staffing and financial inefficiency for the NRC and its licensees. Further this approach does not improve the stability and predictability of the licensing process and does not allow for effective public input or improved public understanding of the decommissioning process.”
Commissioners William Ostendorff and Kristine Svinicki, though, wanted to wait for the staff’s recommendations, due by the end of this month, on how to proceed before moving forward with a Commission direction. “I am inclined to support an integrated rulemaking to leverage the lessons learned from the plants currently transitioning to decommissioning and to provide more a more efficient and predictable regulatory framework for decommissioning,” Ostendorff said. “That said, the Commission should allow the staff to provide the paper, which I understand is in concurrence, prior to rendering a formal decision of decommissioning rulemaking. It would be premature to direct the schedule and scope of such a rulemaking without considering the staff’s input that will be provided [this] month.”
