Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is seeking comments through Dec. 18 on an updated proposal to streamline its environmental review process for new reactors, according to a Friday notice in the Federal Register.
- The proposed rule would codify the findings of the NRC's draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement for Licensing of New Nuclear Reactors, or NR GEIS, a technology-neutral framework to identify potential environmental impacts “common to the construction, operation, and decommissioning of many new nuclear reactors, and thus appropriate for a generic analysis,” the NRC said.
- Fully utilizing NR GEIS findings before conducting any required project-specific environmental analysis could produce net savings for the NRC and new-reactor applicants of up to $2 million per application. Total savings could be $40.1 million over the next decade under the NRC’s assumption of 20 new reactor applications during that time, the NRC said.
Dive Insight:
The NRC voted in April to codify an earlier GEIS framework for advanced nuclear reactor applications. NRC staff expected that rule to reduce the cost of an advanced nuclear reactor application by 20% to 45%, Nuclear Innovation Alliance Executive Director Judi Greenwald said in an April 24 statement.
“The Commission's vote to codify [the framework] builds on agency best practices for environmental reviews and will enable the more effective, efficient and predictable licensing of advanced reactors,” Greenwald said.
In an April 17 memorandum, NRC Secretary Carrie Safford directed commission staff to broaden the scope of the rulemaking package and draft guidance from “‘advanced nuclear reactors’ to any new nuclear reactor application, provided the application meets the values and the assumptions of the plant parameter envelopes and the site parameter envelopes used to develop the GEIS.”
Those changes are reflected in the new proposed rule to ensure it applies to any new fission reactor application that meets certain conditions set forth in the NR GEIS. The rule does not apply to applications for new fusion reactors, which are regulated under the NRC code’s byproduct material framework.
The proposed rule could potentially be used for microreactor applications, but more information is needed to determine whether it could affect applicants that qualify as “small entities” under NRC size standards, the NRC said. The NRC is requesting comment as part of the rulemaking process on an initial regulatory flexibility analysis that raised questions about the proposed rule’s impact on small entities.
The NR GEIS would help NRC staff determine which potential environmental impacts would likely apply to many different reactors and which likely would be unique to each reactor, the NRC said in the Oct. 4 notice. A subsequent project-specific environmental review would be needed to evaluate unique or less common issues.
By enabling greater focus on project-specific issues, the proposed rule would reduce costs incurred by applicants to produce environmental reviews and the NRC for environmental review activities, the NRC said in the notice. In addition to reducing applicant and NRC costs by up to $2 million per application, the proposed rule would add “greater regulatory stability, predictability, and clarity to the licensing process,” the NRC said.
The NRC’s assumption of 20 new reactor applications in the coming decades reflects widespread expectations among nuclear advocates of increased licensing activity. A major update to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Advanced Nuclear report last month laid out a road map to deploy 200 GW of new U.S. nuclear capacity by 2050. A separate DOE study, released in September, suggested that could be achieved entirely with new reactors sited at existing nuclear and retired coal power plants
