Power provider Entergy wants the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reserve the right to issue regulatory exemptions at nuclear power plants undergoing decommissioning.
That’s one of the suggestions the operator of the Vermont Yankee, James A. FitzPatrick, and Pilgrim plants made in its letter to the NRC at the conclusion of the agency’s public comment period on its 2019 decommissioning rulemaking. The rulemaking effort is an attempt to improve the regulatory process for decommissioning plants, with particular focus on reducing the need for regulatory exemptions for these sites.
An NRC-granted safety exemption will take effect at Vermont Yankee on April 15, reducing the plant’s 10-mile emergency planning radius to within the site’s boundaries. State officials have argued against the exemption because spent fuel at the plant has not yet been completely transferred from wet to dry storage, among other reasons.
“The exemption process is an established part of the NRC regulatory framework, and allows for appropriate consideration of the reduced risks of permanently shut down and defueled reactors as compared to operating reactors,” Entergy Vice President of Nuclear Decommissioning Steven Scheurich wrote in a letter Friday, the day the public comment period ended.
The letter states that the comments are consistent with remarks from the Nuclear Energy Institute, an organization that provides industry perspective to the federal government on legislative and regulatory issues.
NRC has received a total of 127 comments so far on the rulemaking.
