Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
3/6/2015
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week approved the emergency planning exemption requests for both the San Onofre Generating Station (SONGS) and Vermont Yankee Station. The NRC Staff had previously recommended both reactors receive the requested exemptions due to the decreased risk of an emergency at a defueled and shutdown reactor. “The Commission continues to support the current practice of approving appropriately justified exemptions from certain emergency planning requirements while plants are transitioning to decommissioning based on site-specific evaluations,” the Commission wrote in its Staff Related Memorandum. “The Commission looks forward to the staff addressing decommissioning issues in a comprehensive rulemaking.”
The NRC approval allows the two sites now to eliminate the requirements to maintain offsite radiological emergency plans and reduce some of the onsite emergency planning activities, although requirements for certain onsite capabilities to communicate and coordinate with offsite response authorities will be retained. There had be concern from some stakeholders, including Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Ranking Member Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), on the safety case of allowing the reactor to reduce the emergency plan as well as the use of exemptions to alter the reactor license. The NRC has maintained that it only grants exemptions on a site-by-site basis following a thorough safety review. In an effort to better define the needs of a decommissioning reactor, the NRC charged its staff to begin a decommissioning rulemaking that would establish better-defined rules at shutdown sites.
Staff Issues Finding of No Significant Impact for Crystal River Exemptions
Meanwhile, the NRC Staff issued a finding of no significant impact for the proposed emergency planning exemptions at the Crystal River Unit 3 Nuclear Generating Plant, according to a posting in the Federal Register this week. Duke Florida, the site operator, is seeking the exemptions as a way to reduce requirements at the site while it changes to a decommissioning site. The NRC Staff found that the defueled and shutdown status of the plant reduces the probability of an emergency. “The NRC staff concluded that the exemptions, if granted, will not significantly increase the probability or consequences of accidents at CR-3 in its permanently shutdown and defueled condition,” the notice said. “There will be no significant change in the types of any effluents that may be released offsite. There will be no significant increase in the amounts of any effluents that may be released offsite. There will be no significant increase in individual or cumulative occupational or public radiation exposure. Therefore, there are no significant radiological environmental impacts associated with the proposed action.”
