The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is working to hammer out the details of its role in the Department of Energy’s legally-mandated civil nuclear credits program, according to slides published this week in advance of a planned NRC meeting.
The commission is “developing criteria” to evaluate applications from economically-troubled nuclear plant operators hoping to get a piece of the roughly $6 billion credits program greenlit in November as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, according to the slides, published Thursday, which senior reactor operations engineer Alex Garmoe was scheduled to present March 23 at a monthly meeting of NRC’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.
The infrastructure law, which directs DOE to establish a process for evaluating bids on credits, requires that the NRC have “reasonable assurance” that nuclear plants being considered for an award “will continue to be operated in accordance with the current licensing basis” and that such sites “pos[e] no significant safety hazard[s].”
NRC is also working with DOE to establish communication protocols for evaluating bids between the two agencies, the commission’s slides said.
Meanwhile, Thursday was the deadline for a DOE request for information on the civil nuclear credits program. The agency Feb. 15 asked for public input on a list of proposed criteria it would use to evaluate bids, and suggested allocating credits over a five-year period at around $1.2 billion per year.
