Constellation Energy Generation, LLC; Dresden Nuclear Power Station, Units 2 and 3; Notice of Intent To Conduct Scoping Process and Prepare Environmental Impact Statement

<NOTICE> NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION <DEPDOC>[Docket Nos. 50-237 and 50-249; NRC-2024-0080]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Constellation Energy Generation, LLC; Dresden Nuclear Power Station, Units 2 and 3; Notice of Intent To Conduct Scoping Process and Prepare Environmental Impact Statement</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Nuclear Regulatory Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice; public scoping meeting and request for comment. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will conduct a scoping process to gather information necessary to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) to evaluate the environmental impacts for the subsequent license renewal (SLR) of Renewed Facility Operating License Nos. DPR-19 and DPR-25, which authorize Constellation Energy Generation, LLC (CEG, the applicant) to operate Dresden Nuclear Power Station (Dresden), Units 2 and 3. The NRC staff is seeking public comment on this action and has scheduled two public scoping meetings that will take place as online webinars. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The NRC will hold two public scoping meetings as online webinars on August 20, 2024, from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. central time (CT) and from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. CT. Details on both meetings can be found on the NRC's Public Meeting Schedule at <E T="03">https://www.nrc.gov/pmns/mtg.</E> Submit comments on the scope of the EIS by September 4, 2024. Comments received after this date will be considered if it is practical to do so, but the NRC is able to ensure consideration only for comments received on or before this date. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments by any of the following methods; however, the NRC encourages electronic comment submission through the Federal rulemaking website. • <E T="03">Federal rulemaking website:</E> Go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and search for Docket ID NRC-2024-0080. Address questions about Docket IDs in <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> to Stacy Schumann; telephone: 301-415-0624; email: <E T="03">Stacy.Schumann@nrc.gov.</E> For technical questions, contact the individual listed in the <E T="02">For Further Information Contact</E> section of this document. • <E T="03">Email comments to: DresdenEnvironmental@nrc.gov.</E> • <E T="03">Mail comments to:</E> Office of Administration, Mail Stop: TWFN-7-A60M, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555- 0001, ATTN: Program Management, Announcements and Editing Staff. For additional directions on obtaining information and submitting comments, see “Obtaining Information and Submitting Comments” in the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Tam Tran, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001; telephone: 301-415-3617; email: <E T="03">Tam.Tran@nrc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Obtaining Information and Submitting Comments</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Obtaining Information</HD> Please refer to Docket ID NRC-2024-0080 when contacting the NRC about the availability of information for this action. You may obtain publicly available information related to this action by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal Rulemaking Website:</E> Go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and search for Docket ID NRC-2024-0080. • <E T="03">NRC's Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS):</E> You may obtain publicly available documents online in the ADAMS Public Documents collection at <E T="03">https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html.</E> To begin the search, select “Begin Web-based ADAMS Search.” For problems with ADAMS, please contact the NRC's Public Document Room (PDR) reference staff at 1-800-397-4209, at 301-415-4737, or by email to <E T="03">PDR.Resource@nrc.gov.</E> The ADAMS accession number for each document referenced in this document (if it is available in ADAMS) is provided the first time that it is referenced. • <E T="03">NRC's PDR:</E> The PDR, where you may examine and order copies of publicly available documents, is open by appointment. To make an appointment to visit the PDR, please send an email to <E T="03">PDR.Resource@nrc.gov</E> or call 1-800-397-4209 or 301-415-4737, between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. • <E T="03">Public Library:</E> A copy of the SLR application for Dresden, including the applicant's environmental report, will be available for public review at the following public library locations: Morris Area Public Library, 604 Liberty St., Morris, IL 60450, and Coal City Library, 85 N Garfield Street, Coal City, IL 60416. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Submitting Comments</HD> The NRC encourages electronic comment submission through the Federal rulemaking website ( <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> ). Please include Docket ID NRC-2024-0080 in your comment submission. The NRC cautions you not to include identifying or contact information that you do not want to be publicly disclosed in your comment submission. The NRC will post all comment submissions at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> as well as enter the comment submissions into ADAMS. The NRC does not routinely edit comment submissions to remove identifying or contact information. If you are requesting or aggregating comments from other persons for submission to the NRC, then you should inform those persons not to include identifying or contact information that they do not want to be publicly disclosed in their comment submission. Your request should state that the NRC does not routinely edit comment submissions to remove such information before making the comment submissions available to the public or entering the comment into ADAMS. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Discussion</HD> By letter dated April 17, 2024 (ADAMS Package Accession No. ML24108A007), CEG submitted to the NRC an application for SLR of Renewed Facility Operating License Nos. DPR-19 and DPR-25 for Dresden, Units 2 and 3, for an additional 20 years of operation. This submission initiated the NRC's proposed action of determining whether to grant the SLR application. Dresden is located in Morris IL, approximately 23 miles southwest of Joliet, IL. The current facility operating license for Dresden, Unit 2, expires at midnight on December 22, 2029, and the current facility operating license for Dresden, Unit 3 expires at midnight on January 12, 2031. The SLR application was submitted pursuant to part 54 of title 10 of the <E T="03">Code of Federal Regulations</E> (10 CFR), “Requirements for Renewal of Operating Licenses for Nuclear Power Plants,” and seeks to extend the facility operating license for Unit 2 to midnight on December 22, 2049, and Unit 3 to midnight January 12, 2051. A notice of receipt and availability of the application was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on May 7, 2024 (89 FR 38197). A notice of acceptance for docketing of the application and of opportunity to request a hearing was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on June 24, 2024 (89 FR 52514) and is available on the Federal rulemaking website ( <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> ) by searching for Docket ID NRC-2024-0080. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Request for Comment</HD> This notice informs the public of the NRC staff's intent to conduct environmental scoping and prepare an EIS related to the SLR application for Dresden, and to provide the public an opportunity to participate in the environmental scoping process, as defined in 10 CFR 51.29 “Scoping-environmental impact statement and supplement to environmental impact statement,” and 10 CFR 51.116, “Notice of intent.” The regulations in 36 CFR 800.8, “Coordination with the National Environmental Policy Act,” allow agencies to use their National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, as amended (42 U.S.C. 4321, <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) (NEPA), process to fulfill the requirements of Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (54 U.S.C. 300101, <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) (NHPA). Therefore, pursuant to 36 CFR 800.8(c), the NRC staff intends to use its process and documentation required for the preparation of the EIS on the proposed action to comply with Section 106 of the NHPA in lieu of the procedures set forth at 36 CFR 800.3 through 800.6. In accordance with the regulations in 10 CFR part 51 and the Commission's decision in CLI-22-2 (ADAMS Accession No. ML22055A496), Dresden submitted an environmental report (ER) as part of the SLR application. The ER is available in ADAMS under Accession No. ML24108A011. The ER is also available for viewing at: <E T="03">https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/licensing/renewal/applications/Dresden-subsequent.html.</E> As part of its environmental review, the NRC staff will first conduct a scoping process for the EIS and, as soon as practicable thereafter, will prepare a draft EIS for public comment. Participation in this scoping process by members of the public and local, State, Tribal, and Federal government agencies is encouraged. The scoping process for the EIS will be used to accomplish the following: a. Define the proposed action that is to be the subject of the EIS; b. Determine the scope of the EIS and identify the significant issues to be analyzed in depth; c. Identify and eliminate from detailed study those issues that are peripheral or are not significant or that have been covered by prior environmental review; d. Identify any environmental assessments and other ElSs that are being or will be prepared that are related to, but are not part of, the scope of the EIS under consider ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 14k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━