The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must bill $805.9 million to its licensees for operations in the current fiscal year, the large majority of its annual budget.
The nuclear-industry regulator has a total budget authority of $940.1 million for fiscal 2017, under the omnibus appropriations budget signed into law on May 5, according to the NRC’s final fee rule, published June 30 in the Federal Register. That amount encompasses $23 million in carryover funds.
A number of billing and collections adjustments, including the 10-percent of agency funding provided annually through congressional appropriations, brings the necessary fee recovery amount to fund NRC operations to just under $806 million. That is divided further into $297.3 million in fees to fund specific services to licensees and license applicants and $508.6 million in annual billing to licensees.
A total of 122 spent nuclear fuel storage and decommissioning reactor facilities will pay fees this year, along with 99 operational commercial power reactors, roughly 2,700 nuclear materials license holders, and a handful of other sites.
Annual fees for spent fuel storage and reactor decommissioning licensees will drop by 4.6 percent for the budget year ending Sept. 30, from $24 million to $23 million.
“In comparison to FY 2016, the decrease in annual fee is mainly the result of a decrease in budgetary resources for storage licensing and rulemaking activities and an increase in 10 CFR part 170 estimated billings due to the application for a consolidated interim storage facility for Holtec/Eddy Lea Energy and the technical review of an application submitted by Waste Control Specialists,” according to the Federal Register notice.
New Jersey-based Holtec International, in cooperation with the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, on March 31 applied for an NRC license for a facility in southeastern New Mexico with capacity to store 120,000 metric tons of spent fuel from U.S. commercial reactors. The NRC is continuing is acceptance review of the application.
More than 75,000 metric tons of used fuel is now stored on-site at nuclear plants around the nation. That amount rises by about 2,000 metric tons annually while the Energy Department works to meet its legal mandate to build a permanent repository for the waste.
Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists filed for its own interim storage license in April 2016, but a year later asked that the NRC suspend review of the application pending the company’s planned merger with EnergySolutions. A federal judge blocked the merger in June, and Waste Control Specialists has not said whether it will move forward with its license application.
