Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Senate overwhelmingly passed bipartisan legislation on Tuesday that streamlines the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s oversight of the existing U.S. nuclear reactor fleet and could accelerate permitting and deployment of advanced nuclear reactors. The House passed the bill on May 8.
- Among other provisions, the Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy, or ADVANCE, Act gives the NRC one year to update its mission statement “to include that licensing and regulation of the civilian use of radioactive materials and nuclear energy be conducted in a manner that is efficient and does not unnecessarily limit” their civilian use or benefits to society.
- Nuclear industry groups like the Nuclear Innovation Alliance and Nuclear Energy Institute hailed the ADVANCE Act’s passage, while skeptics at the Union of Concerned Scientists and Beyond Nuclear raised concerns about its safety implications. “The change to the NRC’s mission effectively directs the agency to enforce only the bare minimum level of regulation at every facility it oversees across the United States,” Union of Concerned Scientists Director of Nuclear Power Safety Edwin Lyman said in a June 17 statement.
Dive Insight:
The ADVANCE Act contains “a hodgepodge of legislation proposed over the years,” Lyman said.
In addition to requiring the NRC to update its mission statement, the bill directs the NRC to reduce certain licensing application fees, study and develop licensing review processes for nuclear facilities on brownfield sites, create expedited procedures for combined reactor license applications for already-certified commercial reactor designs on or adjacent to existing or previous commercial reactor sites, establish risk-informed and performance-based guidance for microreactor licensing and coordinate with the U.S. Department of Energy on advanced nuclear fuel qualification and licensing.
A press statement from Nuclear Innovation Alliance Executive Director Judi Greenwald called the ADVANCE Act “a major step forward in advanced nuclear innovation.”
The bill will “support efforts to further modernize the NRC as it prepares to review an ever-increasing number of applications for subsequent license renewals, power uprates and next-generation nuclear deployments,” Nuclear Energy Institute President and CEO Maria Korsnick said in a separate statement.
Executives at NANO Nuclear Energy, a microreactor technology developer, also cheered the ADVANCE Act’s passage.
“A major killer of [nuclear projects] is that lengthy licensing process,” which can end up costing more than the physical reactor itself, NANO Nuclear Energy CEO and Head of Reactor Development James Walker said.
To the extent that the ADVANCE Act reduces total time spent in the licensing process, it will “reduce the overall capital cost of each unit,” he added.
But efforts to streamline NRC licensing could compromise the commission’s directive to protect public health and safety, Lyman said.
The upshot of the ADVANCE Act’s directive that the NRC not “unnecessarily limit” civilian nuclear energy may be that the nuclear industry and its allies have “even more ammunition to push back on safety and security advances that could well be necessary to ensure licensing of these new reactor designs is safe,” Lyman said.
A statement from Beyond Nuclear raised wider concerns about the bill, including the potential to exacerbate public health and safety risks and promote international proliferation of nuclear material. Beyond Nuclear also noted that the ADVANCE Act failed to renew legislation to extend the filing deadline for compensation for radiation injuries caused by Manhattan Project nuclear waste.
“This legislation not only misdirects vital resources away from sustainable energy solutions but also poses severe environmental, economic, and security risks,” Beyond Nuclear said.
The ADVANCE Act could also sow discord between NRC commissioners and staff, Lyman said, noting delays this year in the NRC’s new “risk informed, technology-inclusive” Part 53 licensing process that has been in development since 2020. The NRC ordered commission staff in March to remove or clarify certain proposed regulatory requirements in a heavily criticized draft rule, delaying the process by about six months.
The perceived misalignment stems from an initial sense that “Part 53 needed to be ready to license any new reactor technology that comes along,” Nuclear Innovation Alliance Research Director Patrick White said.
But the NRC has already demonstrated its ability to effectively assess advanced nuclear reactor technologies through the existing licensing framework under 10 CFR Parts 50 and 52, and Part 53 is now seen as a more “transformative” rule that will enable more efficient licensing of advanced reactors in the longer run, White said.
Advanced reactor licensing guidance released by the NRC in March conforms to that existing framework, providing a near-term path forward for new reactor technologies like TerraPower’s Natrium. TerraPower Director of External Affairs Jeff Navin told Utility Dive in April that “given our timeline,” the company decided to submit a construction permit application under Part 50 for its Natrium demonstration reactor in southwestern Wyoming, which began non-nuclear construction earlier this month.
