The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has opted to keep two rulemakings tied to Yucca Mountain alive, despite staff’s recommendation in February to discontinue those and eight other rulemakings.
The agency announced the decision in a July 29 Federal Register notice. The Yucca Mountain efforts – which concern nuclear fuel tracking, emergency planning, and drug and fatigue testing for employees – had been offered for cancellation because a lack of funding. NRC rulemaking is the agency’s process for developing regulations.
Instead of eliminating them altogether, the NRC deferred the two rulemakings for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage site in Nevada, which the Obama administration canceled in 2011, so that the agency can easily return to them if Congress revives the project in the future. As election season has progressed, House Republicans have been nudging the Energy Department to restart the NRC licensing process.
Since 2013, under a federal court order, the NRC through May had spent $11.93 million of Nuclear Waste Fund money on the Yucca Mountain licensing process, including more than $8.3 million for completion of the site safety evaluation report and more than $1.5 million for a supplement to the site’s environmental impact statement.
Commissioner Kristine Svinicki said in written comments this spring that she opposed canceling the two Yucca Mountain items “in light of the potential argument, albeit conservative in its view, that termination of these two rulemakings may be inconsistent with the Fiscal Year 2016 appropriations act General Provision prohibition on the use of appropriated funds ‘for actions that would remove the possibility that Yucca Mountain might be an option in the future.’”
Commissioner Jeff Baran wrote in his own comments that the “Geologic Repository Operations Area Fitness-for-Duty Requirements” rulemaking may be an appropriate use of any available, previously appropriated Nuclear Waste Fund money.
Baran wrote: “The rulemaking is a discrete task that could utilize the modest amount of funds that likely will be available” after completion of the environmental impact statement supplement; conclusion of the safety evaluation report; and transfer of licensing support network documents to NRC’s public documents database, ADAMS. The first two items have been completed, and NRC spokesman David McIntyre said the third is expected to wrap up “quite soon.”
Chairman Stephen Burns approved deferring the two rules without an explanation, while since-retired Commissioner William Ostendorff did not offer comments.
Proposed in December 2007, the “Geologic Repository Operations Area Security And Material Control And Accounting Requirements” rulemaking focuses on strengthening, streamlining, and consolidating all material control and accounting regulations specific to a geologic repository, according to NRC documents. Proposed in March 2008, the “Geologic Repository Operations Area Fitness-for-Duty Requirements” rulemaking concerns drug testing and fatigue testing for repository employees, according to McIntyre. The proposed rule “would establish general performance objectives and corresponding system capabilities for (the program), with a focus on strengthening, streamlining, and consolidating all MCA regulations specific to a GROA,” according to NRC documents.
The eight canceled rulemakings covered a variety of focus areas: disposition of solid materials; entombment options for power reactors; transfer of certain source materials; an approach to risk-informed, performance-based requirements for nuclear reactors; expansion of the national source tracking system; sabotage of nuclear facilities; security force fatigue at nuclear facilities; and domestic licensing of source materials.
“Sometimes our rulemaking plans change,” Leslie Terry, a team leader with NRC’s Office of Administration, wrote in a blog post Monday. “Our Commissioners voted recently to approve a staff recommendation to discontinue eight rulemaking activities that were in the early stages of development.”
Staff believes the rulemakings are no longer needed to meet NRC’s key strategic goals of safety and security, she wrote.
