Thomas Gardiner
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has unanimously voted to cut off a potential rule that would have required commercial nuclear facilities to promptly remediate radioactive contamination of surrounding ground, subsurface, and groundwater while still in operation.
The three sitting commissioners voted in November and December 2016 to end the rulemaking. The notice was posted to the Federal Register on Oct. 6.
Nuclear facilities licensed by the NRC must now clean up all residual radioactivity prior to license termination to “levels that provide reasonable assurance that no member of the public will receive a dose from the decommissioned facility greater than 25 millirem (mrem) per year,” according to the agency notice. That is the level at which a property can be made available for unrestricted use by the public.
At the commission’s direction, NRC staff in 2007 began studying a proposed rule that would have required nuclear power companies to begin remediation of radioactive contamination prior to the end of a plant’s operational phase instead of waiting until after the facility closed down. The official rulemaking process began in July 2011.
Data was collected from coast to coast for three years before being analyzed to determine the rule’s effectiveness. In October 2016, NRC staff recommended the commissioners make no changes to existing rules.
NRC staff told the commissioners in the report that while the proposal was intended to prevent facilities from becoming “legacy sites,” it was unlikely to have any reasonable impact on protection of public health and safety. A facility becomes a legacy site when its residual radioactivity fails to meet NRC standards for radiation exposure and requires further remediation and monitoring before it can be reopened for development and use.
The staff reported that prompt remediation rules would not be informed by risk levels and might not apply equally to all facilities. Different environmental and geographic challenges mean each spill would have different characteristics. According to the report, the variables would need broad legislative guidance to be covered by the prompt remediation rule.
The NRC said it would no longer pursue the rule, and would issue a new announcement in the event the commission decides to pursue a new corresponding mandate in the future.
The Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station, in Florida south of Miami, provides a good example of why the rule would not have applied evenly to cleanup at all NRC-licensed sites, South Miami Mayor Philip Stoddard told RadWaste Monitor. Owner Florida Power & Light has faced legal battles with conservation and watchdog organizations over releases of radioactive material into nearby ground and sea water.
Stoddard noted that Turkey Point is built on southern Florida’s porous limestone bedrock.
“The problem is that every drop that hits the ground goes down into the groundwater. There is no containment, water pours right through it,” he said. “They came up with this giant radiator system, the cooling canals. But the canals aren’t a contained system because of our porous limestone. You’re just throwing this stuff into the Biscayne Bay, into a national park.”
Stoddard said he was concerned more about the risk of a leak from dry cask storage at the facility than immediate cleanup of contamination at Turkey Point. The plant sits on the southeastern Florida coast and faces threats from hurricanes and high saltwater storm surge. He said he would prefer the NRC focus on key public safety issues, such as requiring thicker-walled storage casks, instead of a cover-all rule that would have limited effectiveness.
