The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission plans by the middle of this month to release the final regulatory basis for its nuclear power reactor decommissioning rulemaking, a senior official said this week.
That milestone would be followed by two years of work on the rule itself, with the commission voting on the final document in fall 2019, according to Meena Khanna, who leads the Reactor Rulemaking and Project Management Branch within the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards.
The rulemaking is intended to clarify and enhance the process of transitioning operating nuclear power plants into decommissioning status through amendments to current regulations. The focus is on reducing the need for site-specific exemptions to regulations and license amendments for closed facilities that pose a lesser danger than operational power plants.
“Bottom line, the NRC does understand that the decommissioning process can be improved and made more efficient and predictable by reducing its reliance on the license amendments as well as exemption requests,” Khanna said in a presentation to the NRC Spent Fuel Management Division 2017 Regulatory Conference.
The regulatory basis will set the parameters for what is included in the rulemaking. Staff found there is adequate justification to move ahead with rulemaking in five areas: emergency preparedness, physical security, decommissioning trust funds, off-site and on-site financial protection requirements and indemnity agreements, and application of the backfit rule.
Other areas, such as the role of state and local governments in decommissioning, would receive guidance rather than new rules. Khanna said NRC staff wants additional input from the public, industry, and other stakeholders on whether rulemaking is required for five additional subject areas: cybersecurity, drug and alcohol testing, minimum staffing and training requirements for certified fuel handlers, aging management, and fatigue management.
The final regulatory basis will formally state whether staff is proceeding with rulemaking, guidance, or no action on those areas, according to Khanna. The next step would be to prepare the proposed rule and draft guidance for a vote by the commission in spring 2018. With that input, staff would ready the draft final rule and draft final guidance for a vote by the panel in fall 2019.
As with other speakers at the two-day conference at NRC headquarters in Rockville, Md., Khanna noted the number of nuclear power plants that have shut down in recent years or are readying for closure. Six power reactors entered decommissioning from 2013 to 2016, while eight more are already scheduled for closure from 2018 to 2025.
Nuclear power providers are faced with a multitude of economic challenges that undermine the business case for keeping their plants open, including decreased demand, lower-cost alternatives, subsidies for renewable power sources, and expensive maintenance, Khanna said.
For instance, in its 2015 announcement of the planned closure of its James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant in upstate New York, Entergy said falling electricity prices would lead to an annual revenue loss of more than $60 million for the facility. The company ultimately sold the plant to Exelon, which is keeping it open with financial support from the state in the form of zero-emissions credits. Still, Entergy plans to shut down its remaining nuclear power operations by 2022.
While New York and a handful of other states are offering financial aid to help sustain nuclear sites within their borders, “we would expect as we go forward that there would be economic business decisions made that may result in closure of additional plants, and that translates into more plants entering the decommissioning process,” Marc Dapas, director of the Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, said in a keynote speech Tuesday at the NRC conference.
The agency also expects its workload to increase in reviewing applications for 40-year license extensions for independent spent fuel storage installations (ISFSI) at nuclear power plants. The storage pads must remain open, even at closed reactors, until the Department of Energy meets its 1982 congressional mandate to provide potential interim and ultimately permanent storage of what is now more than 70,000 metric tons of used fuel dispersed across the country.
“That represents a significant workload for the staff, so we have been positioning ourselves to be able to accommodate that anticipated and increased workload,” Dapas said, without elaborating on the agency’s efforts.
The NRC as of June oversaw 63 nuclear sites with generally licensed ISFSIs. Another two sites had applied for general licenses. There are also 15 site-specific licensed ISFSIs and two outstanding license applications: Waste Control Specialists’ and Holtec International’s applications for consolidated interim storage of spent fuel.
Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists filed its application in April 2016 for a planned facility in West Texas, but asked the NRC to suspend evaluation last April ahead of a federal court ruling on its then-planned merger with low-level radioactive waste disposal rival EnergySolutions. The court in June blocked the deal on antitrust grounds, and the companies did not appeal. Management at WCS has indicated another buyout deal is in the offing, but there was no update as of Friday.
New Jersey-based Holtec International, meanwhile, is submitting additional data for the NRC’s acceptance review of the company’s March 2017 application for a southeastern New Mexico site. Holtec hopes to open its HI-STORE CIS Facility by 2021.
