The trade organization for the U.S. nuclear industry has expressed deep reservations about the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s fee collection plan for the current federal budget year.
The NRC said in February it anticipated collecting $781.9 million in service and annual fees from licensees in fiscal 2019, the large majority of its $911 million budget through Sept. 30. Congress provides the remaining funding through the annual appropriations process.
Overall NRC spending would drop by $11 million from the prior budget year, with the fee take down by $7.4 million.
“The lack of transparency provided on the basis for the budget is problematic,” Doug True, senior vice president and chief nuclear officer at the Nuclear Energy Institute, wrote in a Feb. 27 letter to Annette Vietti-Cook, secretary of the commission. “As the industry addresses significant financial pressures, it is untenable for the agency to fail to provide a strong supportable basis for all aspects of the NRC budget, especially in areas where increases in fees are proposed.”
True said NRC budget documentation did not provide clarity on why the agency’s budget dropped by just 1.2 percent from fiscal 2018 to fiscal 2019 even as the number of operating power plants continues to fall and industry budgets tighten.
Within overall fees, the NRC anticipates collecting $246.7 million from inspections, licensing reviews, and other services. The remaining $535.2 million would be drawn from yearly fees on nuclear power plants and other NRC license holders.
True noted that the regulator’s budget for oversight of operating reactors remained steady at $670 million annually from fiscal 2017 to fiscal 2019. With fees for specific services at operating reactors falling 26 percent over the three years, the annual fees would rise by 7.3 percent in fiscal 2019. That would bring it to 68.7 percent of budget for operating plants, rising from 64 percent, the letter says.
That trend bodes poorly for the continuingly reduced number of working power plants, according to True, who cited 12 sites due to be retired through 2025.
“The loss of these licensees and the expected continued decrease in Part 170 service fees require NRC to take action to reduce the operating plant budget and stop the trend of increasing annual fees for the remaining operating plants,” True wrote.
The NRC fee collection for nuclear fuel facilities would fall from $27.7 million to $24.8 million, with the total budget dropping from $35.2 million to $30 million. True said this reduction rightly represents a falling workload in this work area.
“Our comments highlight an opportunity for transformative change in the NRC budgeting process,” True wrote. “This change can only be accomplished through improvements in stakeholder communications that address both the need for early interaction and the desire for an increased level of detail and transparency in all aspects of the budgeting process.”
In separate comments, nuclear power providers such as FirstEnergy Solutions endorsed NEI’s assessment of the anticipated fees.
The comment period on the NRC’s proposed fee plan ended Monday. The agency this week did not respond to a query on the process for finalizing the fiscal 2019 fees.
