PHOENIX — It’s still unclear whether the final version of a proposed rule change aimed at streamlining nuclear power plant decommissioning will require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to okay licensees’ plans for dismantling their sites, officials said here this week.
NRC staff, who are currently putting together the agency’s final decommissioning rulemaking, “are looking at” whether the commission should formally approve licensees’ Post Shutdown Decommissioning Activities Reports (PSDARs), but they have “not decided as of yet,” Jane Marshall, director of NRC’s Uranium Recovery and Waste Programs division, told RadWaste Monitor during a panel at the Waste Management Symposium in Phoenix.
The agency’s proposed rulemaking, if made final, would reduce some agency-mandated physical security and emergency preparedness requirements for anyone decommissioning shuttered plants.
Critics of the rules change have said that it should force licensees to submit their PSDARs — documents outlining the decommissioning process, including cost estimates — for NRC approval. While NRC currently reviews licensee PSDARs, it does not formally approve them.
Stephen Koenick, head of NRC’s low-level waste and projects branch, told RadWaste Monitor during the panel Monday that agency staff had “received comments in that regard” and that they were “currently deliberating” on the subject. But the final rule will likely keep the commission’s PSDAR regulation “like it currently is,” Koenick said, offering what he categorized as a personal prediction.
“From my standpoint, the [current] process has worked very well,” said Larry Camper, a nuclear energy consultant who until 2015 was the director of NRC’s waste management and environmental protection division. “We’ve successfully decommissioned 11 nuclear power plants, but there are those who feel that the agency should in fact approve PSDARs.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a staunch opponent of the proposed decommissioning rule, told NRC in August that PSDAR approval should be “the bare minimum of public accountability” for the nuclear safety regulator. “Communities surrounding decommissioning nuclear power plants deserve to know that the agency charged with ensuring the safety of nuclear power plants and their environs has conducted a full environmental and safety evaluation of a plant site based on the latest science and plant circumstances,” he said.
NRC approved the draft decommissioning rule on a 2-1 vote in November. Commissioner Jeff Baran, the lone dissenter, argued that the proposed rules change was “laissez-faire” and that it tipped the balance of regulation in favor of industry and away from the agency.
NRC has said that it could submit the final rule to the commission by October.
