The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) could improve its supervision of decommissioning trust funds, the NRC’s Office of Inspector General recently reported.
The report, dated in August but made public this month, said the nuclear regulator should focus on “creating policies and procedures, workflows, and other support to enhance the oversight of the use of decommissioning trust funds.”
The NRC’s Office of Inspector General said it did this assessment after the NRC identified four violations from 2023 to 2024 where decommissioning funds were used for non-decommissioning activities. The violations totaled up to $266,000, according to the report.
The four areas that needed to be improved were additional monitoring on the use of the decommissioning trust funds, additional financial oversight assistance when reviewing the use of the funds, documented policies and workflows and a master list of sites with license conditions.
The report was conducted for NRC’s Office of Inspector General by the global consulting firm Crowe. The firm interviewed project managers for both active reactors and those now in decommissioning. The firm also consulted NRC’s Financial Assessment Branch.
The Financial Assessment Branch is a part of the NRC’s Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards Division of Rulemaking, Environmental and Financial Support. NRC’s Office of Inspector General said NRC inspectors were not interviewed.
While NRC’s Office of Inspector General report found areas needing improvement, it also found NRC has demonstrated “adequate oversight of license compliance with NRC requirements pertaining to decommissioning trust funds,” as said in the report.
Prior to the start of a nuclear power plant’s operation, the licensee must establish a trust fund to ensure financial stability for when decommissioning occurs. Every two years, each nuclear power plant licensee must report to NRC the status of its decommissioning funds for each reactor, or share of a reactor, which it owns.
At the start of 2025, NRC was responsible for 23 sites with reactors undergoing decommissioning and 94 operating reactor sites, according to the report.