Since 2010, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Staff has been working on revisions to 10 C.F.R. Part 61, Licensing Requirements for Land Disposal of (Low-Level) Radioactive Waste. The original effort was intended to focus on potential impacts from anticipated disposal of large quantities of depleted uranium (DU), which is considered a “unique waste stream,” from uranium enrichment facilities. But over the course of the last seven years, the Staff’s concerns over other possible unique waste streams grew, and so did the scope of the proposed changes to Part 61.
KEY TRENDS IN LAW AND POLICY REGARDING
NUCLEAR ENERGY AND MATERIALS
NUCLEAR ENERGY AND MATERIALS
On May 23, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a notice inviting comments on the interplay between state policy goals and organized wholesale electricity markets. The referenced state policy goals involve state support for zero-carbon-emitting power plants, including nuclear power plants, generally in the form of tax credits.
Putting aside the climate change politics swirling around US President Donald Trump’s recent executive order on “Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth,” what does the order mean for the nation’s electric generation portfolio? Can the gradual decline in the role of coal-fired generation be reversed?
It reads like a spy novel: a fictitious company rents a storefront and applies to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC or Commission) and state regulators for a license to acquire radioactive materials and succeeds in getting the license—but it isn’t fiction.
On March 1, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) released a report from the NRC’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) titled “Audit of NRC’s Oversight of Security at Decommissioning Reactors.”
On February 23, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) held a joint meeting to discuss “Grid Reliability, Protection of Critical Infrastructure Information, and Nuclear Power Plants.”
On October 28, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) published the Decommissioning Lessons Learned report.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff has issued a plan to revise 10 CFR 30.35 to require licensees that possess radioactive sealed sources with Category 1 or 2 quantities of byproduct material (such as cobalt-60, iodine-131, cesium-137, and americium-141) to provide financial assurance for the sources’ disposal.
