The Nuclear Regulatory Fee (NRC) has directed its workers to publish a proposed rule and draft steering to create Half 53, a much-awaited risk-informed and technology-inclusive licensing framework geared towards superior applied sciences, together with non-light-water-reactors (non-LWRs).
In a workers necessities memorandum (SRM) made public on March 4, the fee directed workers to include a number of adjustments to a March 2023 draft proposal inside six months of the SRM’s issuance. A last model of the proposed rule is predicted by September 2024. Issuance of a last rule ought to comply with inside 12 to 18 months after the proposal’s publication, bearing in mind a public remark interval, NRC Chair Christopher Hanson advised reporters on Monday.
Whereas the 2019 Nuclear Vitality Innovation and Modernization Act (NEIMA) units a deadline for the brand new framework’s rulemaking to be accomplished by December 2027, “I might hope [a final rule] can be nonetheless totally away from that. I don’t count on it to exit to 2027, definitely,” Hanson stated. “The fee has been eager to get shifting on this, and we had urged the workers to place in additional aggressive deadlines, so I believe we’re effectively forward of the statutory requirement.”
Hanson famous the method will supply “lots of different alternatives for stakeholder engagement and to supply suggestions. And given the quantity of curiosity that I believe we’ve seen on this rule up to now, little question that people on the market on the earth will will dive into this and share their views with the workers and and with the fee.”
A Marked Step Ahead for Half 53
The NRC’s determination to publish a proposed rule establishing Half 53 beneath the NRC’s Title 10 of the Code of Federal Laws (10 CFR) marks important progress for its regulatory effort to ship a brand new licensing course of as a substitute for its present massive mild water reactor (LWR) licensing approaches beneath Title 10 of the Code of Federal Laws (10 CFR) Components 50 and 52.
“That is the primary regulatory framework developed for superior applied sciences and designs that features non-light-water reactors,” the NRC underscored on Monday.
Thus far, 92 of the nation’s commercially working nuclear reactors on the nation’s 54 nuclear vegetation have been licensed beneath 10 CFR Half 50, a historic two-part course of involving a development allow and an working license because the plant approaches completion. Within the Nineties, the NRC authorised a second pathway, 10 CFR Half 52, which allowed an applicant to obtain a mixed license for development and operation, with elective steps reminiscent of a reactor vendor making use of for approval of a reactor design or builders making use of for a website allow. Vogtle 3 and 4 grew to become the primary two reactors licensed beneath Half 52. (For extra, see POWER’s explainer right here.)
Half 53, as prescribed by NEIMA, is supposed to supply a “voluntary” different to superior nuclear candidates beneath a framework that will be technology-inclusive (relevant to all reactor applied sciences); risk-informed (utilizing info from danger assessments to focus security analyses on vital points; and performance-based (to make sure vegetation are regulated primarily based on how they carry out and never simply how they’re designed.
In accordance with Dr. Adam Stein, director for Nuclear Vitality Innovation on the Breakthrough Institute, the broad stakeholder consensus is that “The Half 53 rule must be predictable, versatile, allow innovation, and, importantly, be scalable.” As well as, “Half 53 ought to present an progressive strategy to licensing that’s technology-inclusive, risk-informed, and performance-based. It must be transformational, not iterative, of present licensing pathways,” he wrote in a latest evaluation of Half 53 main subjects.
However whereas the NRC formally kicked off efforts to craft a proposed rule in 2020, it has grappled with differing views on key subjects. The fee’s SRM issued on Monday follows “intensive public engagement with 21 rounds of public evaluate and touch upon preliminary rule language,” the NRC famous. “The workers held 24 public conferences with stakeholders in addition to 16 public conferences with NRC’s unbiased advisory group, the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards. The workers will search suggestions from the general public when it points the proposed rule and draft steering later this yr,” it stated.
Vital Adjustments In comparison with the March 2023 Draft Proposal
Whereas the fee on Monday set redlines and ordered important adjustments to its draft proposal in its SRM, the adjustments are a “step in the suitable path,” Stein advised POWER on Monday. Pivotally, they tackle many key issues raised by stakeholders, he stated.
The proposed rule will probably be primarily based on a number of standards, together with “reactor siting necessities; analyzing potential accidents; defining security features; categorizing buildings, techniques, and elements; addressing development and manufacturing necessities; offering protection in depth; and defending the general public and plant staff throughout regular operations,” the NRC stated. “The proposed rule additionally modifies company rules for operator licensing, worker fitness-for-duty, bodily safety, and website entry authorization.”
In maybe probably the most distinguished change, the fee disapproved the inclusion of Framework B, a proposed framework to supply a “conventional” however technology-inclusive possibility that differs from the popular Framework A by design.
The NRC had famous that as a result of Framework B consists of the “identical or comparable construction and necessities as 10 CFR Half 50 and 10 CFR Half 52,” it gives a foundation for the NRC to make its findings “on cheap assurance of satisfactory safety with out the necessity to set up risk-informed efficiency requirements, reminiscent of [quantitative health objectives (QHOs)].” The fee on Monday, nonetheless, directed workers to develop an choices paper inside one yr, together with an possibility to make use of a separate half within the 10 CFR for Framework B.
As Stein defined to POWER on Monday, Framework B’s evolution arose from stakeholder suggestions that it will be helpful to have an possibility that aligns with worldwide requirements. Nevertheless, “As an alternative of enabling that alignment by means of steering, as an elective strategy to assembly the necessities in Half 53, the NRC made a second framework within Half 53,” he famous. “That created a number of challenges, together with that Framework B was a standard deterministic and prescriptive strategy as an alternative of the risk-informed and performance-based strategy required by NEIMA.”
By eradicating the choice, “we’ve received a framework that actually leads with a probabilistic and danger info in a number one function,” Hanson advised reporters on Monday. “That’s one of many massive issues: It gives flexibility for candidates to suggest a cumulative danger commonplace. So, if you consider probabilistic danger evaluation, the place you might be quantifying the chance and penalties of varied sorts of occasions, on the finish of that, then you definitely need to have a metric when it comes to the frequency because it impacts the general public. What we’ve achieved is say, ‘there’s lots of historic work within the NRC on that going again to our 1986 security objective coverage assertion, [let’s] have one thing that’s in keeping with that general … security objective coverage assertion, however you get to suggest what your metric will probably be.’”
Streamlining the Rule: From QHOs to Manufacturing facility Gas Loading
The fee on Monday notably additionally directed workers to specify in its proposed rule that candidates should suggest “a complete plant danger metric (or set of metrics) and an outline of the related methodology used to exhibit that the proposed design meets stated metric(s).”
QHOs “weren’t a viable metric in a performance-based rule (extra technical foundation right here and right here),” Stein defined. “As an alternative, builders must present their very own metric that’s particularly not meant as a real-time requirement—a serious authorized flaw with the draft,” he stated. “This strategy creates extra flexibility for brand spanking new applied sciences however has much less regulatory predictability. Clear steering would be the key—together with clear communication by each candidates and the NRC—to creating this strategy work.”
As well as, the fee additionally reversed a number of present regulatory packages. “The generic points program and others, we predict are satisfactory, and due to this fact, the ability security program (FSP) that was proposed by workers can also be not vital,” Hanson famous. The draft’s FSP had beforehand known as for routine assessments of potential adjustments to plant hazards. On the identical time, the fee retained ALARA (as little as moderately achievable), an occupational hazard precept, as programmatic necessities slightly than a design requirement, he stated.
As notably, the fee directed the workers “to contemplate and embrace different rulemakings which have been finalized or have made progress whereas Half 53 was being developed,” Stein stated. These embrace the Emergency Preparedness for Small Modular Reactors and Different New Applied sciences, loading gas beneath a producing license for testing, and different areas.
In accordance with Hanson, one of many largest variations in comparison with the draft proposal has been the fee’s directive to its workers “to take one other take a look at gas loading in a manufacturing facility for microreactors to be integrated into the proposal.” That can entail trying on the NRC’s present rules and proposing “some extra rule adjustments for a way microreactors might be fueled and examined throughout the manufacturing facility,” he stated.
—Sonal Patel is a POWER senior affiliate editor (@sonalcpatel, @POWERmagazine).
Editor’s Word: This story is presently evolving and topic to alter. We encourage you to revisit this text or test our web site for the most recent updates.
