Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will publish its proposed rule for a new risk-informed, technology-inclusive, performance-based licensing pathway for advanced nuclear reactors in the Oct. 31 Federal Register, according to a pre-publication notice.
- The proposed rule for the new licensing pathway, known as 10 CFR Part 53, updates a previous version to remove a second proposed regulatory framework and eliminate quantitative health objectives for nuclear plant risk analyses, NRC said.
- Part 53 would result in net savings “to the industry and the NRC” of $53.6 million to $68.2 million per license applicant relative to the existing Part 50 and Part 52 licensing pathways and increase regulatory stability, predictability, clarity and flexibility in the licensing process, according to a draft regulatory analysis prepared by the NRC.
Dive Insight:
“A successful Part 53 would be more effective and efficient at licensing and oversight of advanced reactors, and would enable the large-scale deployment of nuclear energy that the country needs to meet climate, energy, economic and national security goals,” Nuclear Energy Institute Director of New Nuclear Marc Nichol told Utility Dive in an email.
The Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act, enacted in Jan. 2019 after passing the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives with overwhelming bipartisan support, requires the NRC to complete the Part 53 rulemaking process by the end of 2027. Despite a roughly 12-month delay at previous stages of the process, the agency should comfortably meet that deadline, Nuclear Innovation Alliance Research Director Patrick White said.
In March, NRC commissioners directed agency staff to significantly revise a previous version of the Part 53 rule. NRC staff have spent the past six months addressing 15 directives laid out in the accompanying March 4 staff requirement memorandum, White said.
Among the most impactful changes in the current version of the proposed rule are the elimination of a second regulatory framework within Part 53, known as Framework B, and the removal of quantitative health objectives, or QHOs, to assess nuclear plants’ potential human health risks.
The initial inclusion of Framework B “created some concern because you essentially had one rule with two frameworks and a lot of overlap,” White said.
Whereas Framework A took a risk-informed approach developed during a multiyear licensing modernization initiative, Framework B “largely replicated the existing licensing approach in parts 50 and 52,” which conventional nuclear reactor developers have used for decades, “but modified the approach to be technology neutral,” the Part 53 proposed rule says.
The March 4 staff memo gave NRC staff one year to report on three possible paths forward for the discarded approach: incorporating elements of Framework B into the existing Parts 50 and 52 licensing pathways; using Framework B in a separate part of 10 CFR; or “creat[ing] a less prescriptive regulation where methods of compliance, similar to Framework B, could be located in guidance.”
The QHO requirements in the earlier version of the Part 53 rule were seen by some industry stakeholders as constraining future licensing applicants’ flexibility regarding safety analysis, White said.
“While [this is] one way to demonstrate safety, it’s not necessarily the only way,” White said. “You can design a power plant that is safe that [does not] use these design requirements.”
Instead of requiring all applicants to meet QHO requirements, Part 53 should direct license applicants to “propose a comprehensive plant risk metric (or set of metrics) and a description of the associated methodology used to demonstrate that the proposed design meets said metric(s),” the staff memo said.
While those metrics and methodology would not by themselves be sufficient to demonstrate adequate safety, and other health and safety standards would continue to apply to all applicants, the removal of QHO requirements would “create a more flexible regulatory framework where applicants could show they meet the intent of complete evaluation of plant safety without having to use a specific set of tools to demonstrate that,” White said.
That shift aligns with the overarching objective of Part 53, which is to “create a rule that is applicable to any technology and enables efficient and effective regulation of these new reactors,” he added.
But with a lengthy rulemaking process still to come, early-mover advanced reactor developers are pursuing existing licensing pathways for their first projects. Oklo is pursuing a “custom combined licensing process,” CEO Jacob DeWitte said in an August shareholder presentation, while TerraPower is applying for separate construction and operating licenses through the Part 50 pathway.
Part 53 is likely to evolve over time, as Parts 50 and 52 have, and its longer-term applicability will depend on how useful it proves relative to those existing frameworks, White said.
“No rule is going to be perfect the first time it’s published…but if there aren’t clear benefits, I imagine most applicants would just continue to use Part 50 or 52,” he said.
The publication of the Part 53 proposed rule will kick off a public comment period that will last at least 60 days but could be extended into next year at the NRC’s discretion, White said. NRC staff will then review public comments and prepare a final rule.
