The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday gave interested parties more than two additional weeks to comment on the draft version of its interim staff guidance for materials licensees’ decommissioning funding plans.
The document, when finalized, is intended to give stakeholders at the NRC and in industry “guidance based on developments and lessons learned regarding financial assurance” in areas including decommissioning cost estimates, updating select financial instruments, descriptions of the state of facilities, and assessing events after NRC approval of the prior site decommissioning funding plan, according to an NRC notice in the Federal Register.
The initial comment deadline has been extended from Sept. 17 to Oct. 5. As of Tuesday it did not appear any comments had been filed, but an NRC spokesman noted that input is generally filed toward the end of the comment period.
The category of materials licensees largely covers sites other than nuclear reactors, which can range from medical facilities to nuclear fuel production operations, according to the NRC. As with reactor licensees, these facilities are required under federal regulations to provide financial assurance for decommissioning operations that can cost anywhere from a few thousand dollars up to roughly $100 million.
The 12-page staff guidance covers a broad range of topics, including: the types of radioactive material in inventory (licensee-owned, customer-owned, and inventory in-process); the eight events that should be considered in preparing a new decommissioning funding plan for the NRC (including facility modifications, on-site disposal, and higher-than-anticipated estimates for waste inventory and disposal costs); and a template for the sight draft.
Comments can be submitted at www.regulations.gov, Docket ID NRC-2018-0159; or by mail to May Ma, Office of Administration, Mail Stop: TWFN-7-A60M, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, D.C. 20555-0001.