Up & Atom

Good news for Mexico—and a potential farewell to Egypt and South Africa: It’s time to look out for the Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) changes to the list of generally authorized countries that appear in Appendix A to 10 CFR Part 810 (Appendix A).

The Commission recently approved the NRC Staff’s recommendation to pursue a 24-month schedule for updating the agency’s Generic Environmental Impact Statement for License Renewal of Nuclear Plants (LR GEIS). The Commission’s decision signifies an ambitious push forward to make the LR GEIS applicable to subsequent license renewal (SLR) applications.

The Commission recently issued SRM-SECY-19-0100, in which it disapproved, by a 2-to-1 vote, a request made by the NRC staff that sought approval to discontinue the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) Security Requirements rulemaking and deny a related petition for rulemaking filed by C-10 Research and Education Foundation Inc.

The NRC is taking an important step toward an inclusive licensing regime for a new generation of reactors. On January 3, the NRC staff submitted for commission approval a recommended final rule on “Emergency Preparedness for Small Modular Reactors and Other New Technologies.”

On December 10, the NRC staff issued SECY-21-0105 seeking approval from the NRC commissioners to publish a notice of final rule that would officially replace the NRC's sensitive unclassified non-safeguards information (SUNSI) program with a Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) program. The new rules would appear in 10 CFR Part 2, "Agency Rules of Practice and Procedure," and be consistent with the government-wide rules on CUI in 32 CFR Part 2002.

Several years ago, the US government embarked on a project to standardize federal agency programs—including the NRC’s—for managing unclassified-but-sensitive information. At the NRC, this government-wide Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) program is intended to replace the agency’s Sensitive Unclassified Non-Safeguards Information (SUNSI) program.

The NRC published a notice of a petition for rulemaking from the Tribal Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee (TRMTC) in the Federal Register on April 9 asking the NRC to revise 10 CFR Part 37 to require that licensees provide advanced notification to participating tribal governments of certain radioactive material shipments that will cross a tribe’s reservation.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) hosted a public meeting on April 13 to discuss and solicit stakeholder feedback on the cumulative effects of regulation regarding final changes made to the fitness-for-duty (FFD) drug testing requirements in 10 CFR Part 26 (Part 26). The NRC published the proposed rule in the Federal Register on September 16, 2019, to align Part 26 with certain drug testing provisions in the 2008 Health and Human Services Guidelines.

The NRC recently held a meeting to discuss the path forward on its plans to address inconsistencies between the two primary licensing paths for new reactors. The agency estimates that its streamlining effort will result in net averted costs to industry and the NRC of tens of millions of dollars. Comments on the first phase of this undertaking are due in April, and interested stakeholders should consider taking advantage of this opportunity to influence agency policy.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Staff has sought the Commission’s approval to initiate a rulemaking to update the agency’s environmental protection regulations for licensing activities.