In July 2024, President Biden signed the Fire Grants and Safety Act into law. According to DOE, the law is “chalking up a BIG win for our nuclear power industry. Included in the bill is bipartisan legislation known as the ADVANCE Act that will help us build new reactors at a clip that we haven’t seen since the 1970s.”
The ADVANCE Act is short for: ‘‘Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy Act of 2024.”
DOE states, “any of the advanced reactors under development use different coolants than what is currently used in our commercial light-water reactors—making the regulatory process more of a challenge. The ADVANCE Act directs the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to reduce certain licensing application fees and authorizes increased staffing for NRC reviews to expedite the process.”
NRC expediting environmental reviews is discussed in Section 506 of Title V.
TITLE V—IMPROVING COMMISSION EFFICIENCY
Sec. 501. Mission alignment. NRC must update mission statement to include “efficient”
Sec. 502. Strengthening the NRC workforce.
Sec. 503. Commission corporate support funding.
Sec. 504. Performance metrics and milestones.
Sec. 505. Nuclear licensing efficiency.
Sec. 506. Modernization of nuclear reactor environmental reviews.
According to Section 506, NRC must submit a report to Congress within 180 days (due January 2025) with planned efforts to “facilitate efficient, timely, and predictable environmental reviews of nuclear reactor applications for a license…through expanded use of categorical exclusions, environmental assessments, and generic environmental impact statements.”
These new mandates are based on changes made to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in section 321 of the Fiscal Responsibility Act in 2023 as discussed in this blog from the American Action Forum. I previously wrote a blog about the history of NEPA and my submitting public comments to NRC.
According to the ADVANCE Act, NRC must report to Congress and consider:
A) Using NEPA documents prepared by other Federal agencies
B) Using previous NEPA documents prepared by NRC
C) Using mitigated findings of no significant impact to reduce proposed impacts
D) Relying on other Federal, State, and local government evaluations
E) Coordinating development of NEPA documents with other Federal agencies
F) Streamlining consultations with other Federal, State, and local agencies
G) Streamlining analyses of alternatives including sites and power alternatives
H) Establishing new categorical exclusions
I) Amending 10 CFR Section 51.20(b) to determine if an EA can replace an EIS
J) Authorizing use of applicant’s EIS as the NRCs draft EIS
K) Adopting online and digital technologies to allow applicant and agency coordination
L) Making other revisions to 10 CFR 51 that may be needed
Yesterday, I attended a virtual public meeting with NRC staff to take comments on the ADVANCE Act directive to be included in the report to Congress. About 60 people attended including 40 members of the public and 20 NRC staff. Some attendees strongly oppose nuclear energy while others represent the industry or academia which made for diverse and lively comments.
About 20 years ago, I worked for NRC conducting environmental reviews for relicensing operating nuclear power plants. Many of us felt the NEPA schedule of about 18 months was very aggressive and there was more than one Christmas-New Year’s holiday “break” we had to work to get the EIS completed on time! Here’s the basic process: the applicant submits an application then NRC issues the notice of intent (NOI) that gets published in the federal register (FRN) which starts the clock on the application process. NRC staff reviews the industry environmental report and starts the scoping process to conduct the NEPA study, site tours and audits, permit reviews, discussions with agencies/tribes and obtain public comments. This provides input into the draft EIS which involves obtaining and addressing public comments to prepare the final EIS. The NEPA review occurs parallel to the safety evaluation report and the total process to grant a license takes about 2 years.
I commented that for the above item F, NRC must also consult with Native American tribes which are sovereign nations as they are directly affected by uranium mining, mill sites, transportation routes, and more impacts that must be considered in NEPA analyses. I know NRC staff are well aware and are very involved in tribal consultations and the Congressional text must be updated. I could not identify anyone on the public meeting representing Native American tribes and many of the public attendees complained about lack of notification for the meeting. I randomly learned about the meeting by looking at new documents entered into ADAMS. I suggest NRC make more of an effort to engage the general public through social media announcements.
As I reported about 10 months ago, I worked preparing environmental reports to build small modular reactors (SMR) in Idaho. We were very close to submitting the application before the utility shut the project down so the NRC officially did not start the NEPA process. However, NRC became very involved in “pre-application” meetings and reviews of draft documents so there was close coordination between industry and the regulators to make the process very efficient.
Regarding the ADVANCE Act mandate of considerations, NRC will need to determine and justify if other NEPA documents previously prepared by NRC or other Federal, State, or local agencies are relevant, reliable, and adequate to meet all requirements. While NRC consults with Department of Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service and Department of Commerce NOAA, I recommend NRC obtain reviews from the U.S. Geological Survey which is often closely involved in local and tribal resource issues. For example, see the DOE project involving USGS on tribal land related to impacts from uranium mill sites which I coauthored.
I advocate that NEPA documents need to consider alternative siting and sources of power. How did the applicant objectively consider various locations for the project and arrive at the proposed site? For the Idaho SMR project, the Shoshone-Bannock tribe wanted to know the same thing and wondered how the site construction might affect their reservation’s view of the mountains or noise during construction as well many other disruptive concerns.
I believe one of the failures of the Idaho SMR project, beyond the proposed rapid inflationary construction cost increases to the project, was the lack of public outreach to engage ratepayers such as in Salt Lake City to counteract the misinformation regarding baseload and alternative energy sources needed for grid stability. As coal plants get retired or replaced with natural gas plants, the only other source of baseload power (where the electricity flows 24/7) is with nuclear power. While wind and solar power alternatives are increasingly popular, without very expensive battery storage — grid stability will be impossible. So the public, especially the anti-nuclear activists need to face the energy and climate change realities. Therefore, I recommend NRC keep the requirement for industry to provide alternative siting and need for power sources in the environmental report which NRC reviews and incorporates in the EIS. I also do not advocate that first of a kind power plants receive an exemption from considering alternatives.
Similarly, for category J, I do not advocate for NRC adopting the industry environmental report as the draft EIS. That will skip the scoping process involving the pubic. For the Idaho SMR project, we almost completed the environmental report and there was no public involvement. How can NRC plagiarize verbatim industry reports then claim it meets their nuclear ASME quality assurance practices (NQA-1)? When I worked for NRC and learned that our consultant took information directly from the industry report without referencing the source of information this became a serious breach of trust. How will the general public perceive any government report written by industry proponents?
With the U.S. not creating a nuclear waste repository and having to pay industry to store nuclear waste, it is not reasonable for NRC to expect industry will resolve these issues in the environmental report as would be needed if category J were adopted.
I suggest NRC prepare a nationwide programmatic or generic EIS that can be tiered to site specific EIS documents. I do not agree that EAs can be substituted for EIS documents (category I) as nuclear power plants are major federal actions and public involvement with meetings is necessary and might be excluded in the EA process.
Plans to conduct another NRC public meeting on the ADVANCE Act is planned for October 16. This blog will serve as my official public comments submitted to Mr. Lance Rakovan: lance.rakovan@nrc.gov.