The Nuclear Regulatory Commission directed its Staff last week to begin a rulemaking to better address the NRC’s role in regulating decommissioning power plants, with an end date tentatively set for 2019, according to the Commission’s Staff Related Memorandum. Currently, the NRC does not have regulations that reflect the decreased security and safety threat a decommissioning reactor offers. Instead, a series of license amendments is needed to exempt the plants, a step that can prove costly and timely for both utilities and the NRC. The NRC has already approved exemptions for the Kewaunee Power Station, and in this SRM, it approved the exemptions reducing security and emergency preparedness requirements requested by Duke Energy Florida for the Crystal River Power Station.
According to the SRM, the Staff should focus on a wide variety of issues in its rulemaking that affect decommissioning plants, including the appropriate amount of NRC involvement in the Post Shutdown Decommissioning Activity Report as well as the role of state and local government in the process. “This rulemaking should address: issues discussed in SECY-00-0145 such as the graded approach to emergency preparedness; lessons learned from the plants that have already (or are currently)going through the decommissioning process; the advisability of requiring a licensee’s Post Shutdown Decommissioning Activity Report to be approved by NRC; the appropriateness of maintaining the three existing options for decommissioning and the timeframes associated with those options; the appropriate role of state and local governments and non-governmental stakeholders in the decommissioning process; and any other issues deemed relevant by the NRC staff,” the SRM said.
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