The leaders of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee this week lauded the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for eliminating what industry called a burdensome feature of a planned rule to license advanced nuclear reactors.
Sens. Ben Carper (D-Del) and Shelley Capito (W-WVa.), the chair and ranking member of the committee, each released statements Monday praising the NRC for its decision this week to eliminate what is known as Framework B from the commission’s Part 53 rulemaking.
Framework B would have required builders of advanced reactors, a legal category that applies to multiple types of non-light-water reactors, to complete a detailed analysis of worst-case scenarios called a probabilistic risk analysis.
NRC this week said it might publish a draft Part 56 rule for certifying advanced reactors “in about six months.” The agency has estimated that the final rule might arrive by July 2025. A federal law from 2019 requires the NRC to complete this rulemaking by 2027.
“I am pleased to see the NRC heeded our call and made significant improvements to their draft proposed rule to better support the next generation of nuclear reactors,” Carper wrote in his statement. “I am grateful for the years of work and public engagement that has gone into this rulemaking, and to know that the Commission is well ahead of schedule with today’s announcement.”
Carper is not running for reelection and planned to leave Congress in January.
“Establishing a usable regulatory framework is vital to enable the licensing and deployment of advanced nuclear reactors, and the Commission’s direction to fix the flawed Part 53 rulemaking is a step toward finalizing the rules to increase clean, reliable nuclear energy,” Capito wrote in her statement.
Carper and Capito also said they would continue to press for passage of her ADVANCE Act, a nuclear-policy reform bill introduced last year and which now must be reconciled with the package of nuclear energy legislation the House passed in February.
