The Nuclear Regulatory Commission discontinued efforts to get more insight into whether nuclear power plant owners are obeying agency rules about which investments are allowed in decommissioning trust funds, commission staff told the agency’s inspector general.
Staff made the decision official in September, according to a memo dated Oct. 26 and uploaded to the NRC’s website on Friday. Staff briefed the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) about the decision on Sept. 5 and OIG said staff’s decision met the spirit of a recommendation the internal watchdog made in a 2021 report.
Since 2021, the memo said, NRC staff reached out to other branches of the federal government and the financial industry about how the commission could get more insight into the plant owners’ investing behavior. Owners have to maintain minimum balances on decommissioning trust funds so that they can afford to safely tear their plants down and dispose of the resulting radioactive waste at the end of the plant’s life.
On the government side of things, “[s]taff engaged with representatives of the [Department of Energy’s] Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Federal Reserve Board,” but neither federal regulator would provide resources to help with the Inspector General’s recommendation, the NRC staff memo reads.
Likewise, “one of the larger trust companies” that works with NRC licensees refused to give the agency information about their clients’ compliance with commission regulations, according to the memo.
“Accordingly, in light of extensive government partner agency engagement, considerable industry outreach and communication, and staff analysis and consideration of internal assessment methods, the staff has ceased development of a procedure on how best to periodically assess trustee compliance and will terminate further assessment activities,” staff wrote in the memo.
While that seemed to be enough for the Inspector General’s Office, “it is important to note that the decommissioning landscape is evolving; therefore, the NRC OIG will continue to audit this area,” the inspector’s office wrote.
