Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Stephen Burns said yesterday that his office expects a significant amount of decommissioning work in the coming years, as evidenced by the shutdown of the Pilgrim nuclear power plant, the potential shutdown at Vermont Yankee, and the shuttering of more than a dozen other plants in the past decade.
Burns’ comments came during the opening panel of the ANS Winter Meeting and Nuclear Technology Expo at the Wardman Park Marriott in Washington, D.C. A major project on the commission’s plate, he said, will be the GAIN Initiative. That initiative, which was announced Nov. 6, will help the commission design a blueprint for “streamlining regulation in a changing environment,” Burns said. The commission has directed staff to improve the effectiveness and transparency of the decommissioning process, with a rulemaking expected in early 2019.
“We will adjust the way we do business in order to be the responsible, credible, and independent regulator that stakeholders and the industry need,” Burns said. “To build on our strength of technical competence, the NRC is learning from experience and listening to new ideas, some that don’t come from the NRC.”
Response to the Fukushima Daiichi disaster and the prospect of downsizing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission workforce over the next five years were also among the topics Burns touched upon Monday. During the question-and-answer portion of the meeting, which included five other speakers, Burns and the NRC were accused of putting up roadblocks to legislation and initiatives that can be successful in today’s world. An audience member suggested that if the U.S. government had waited to fully develop concepts with the Manhattan Project during World War II, that it would have lost the race to Nazi Germany.
“It seems perfection is getting in the way of ‘better than what we have now,’” said David Erickson, of Savannah River Nuclear Solutions. “How can the NRC address these issues?”
Burns said he rejected the premise of the question and pointed out that the NRC is not a decisionmaker on nuclear waste policy issues. He said the NRC is capable of licensing interim storage projects and consolidated sites, but ultimately it does not decide waste policy. The NRC is prepared to look at what comes on its plate, he said.
