Renewing Nuclear Power Plant Operating Licenses-Environmental Review; Correction

<RULE> NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION <CFR>10 CFR Part 51</CFR> <DEPDOC>[NRC-2018-0296]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 3150-AK32</RIN> <SUBJECT>Renewing Nuclear Power Plant Operating Licenses—Environmental Review; Correction</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Nuclear Regulatory Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule; correction. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is correcting a final rule that was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on August 6, 2024, regarding the amendment of NRC's environmental protection regulations to update the Commission's 2013 findings on the environmental effect of renewing the operating license of a nuclear power plants. This action is necessary to correct formatting errors. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The correction takes effect on September 5, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Please refer to Docket ID NRC-2018-0296 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-2018-0296. Address questions about NRC dockets to Helen Chang; telephone: 301-415-3228; email: <E T="03">Helen.Chang@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">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> • <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. eastern time, Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Yanely Malave-Velez, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, telephone: 301-415-1519, email: <E T="03">Yanely.Malave-Velez@nrc.gov;</E> Jennifer Davis, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, telephone: 301-415-3835, email: <E T="03">Jennifer.Davis@nrc.gov;</E> or Kevin Folk, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, telephone 301-415-6944, email: <E T="03">Kevin.Folk@nrc.gov.</E> All are staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> The NRC may post materials related to this document, including public comments, on the Federal rulemaking website at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> under Docket ID NRC-2018-0296. In addition, the Federal rulemaking website allows members of the public to receive alerts when changes or additions occur in a docket folder. To subscribe: (1) navigate to the docket folder (NRC-2018-0296); (2) click the “Subscribe” link; and (3) enter an email address and click on the “Subscribe” link. In the interest of clarity and transparency, the NRC is correcting the attachment to the final rule, published at 89 FR 64166 on March 14, 2023, to distinguish the quoted material. The text is unchanged. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Correction</HD> In FR Doc. 2024-16643, published at 89 FR 64166 on August 6, 2024, on page 64197, the section titled “Separate Views of Commissioner Caputo on Renewing Nuclear Power Plant Operating Licenses—Environmental Review,” following the <E T="02">NOTE</E> is corrected to read as follows: <HD SOURCE="HD1">Separate Views of Commissioner Caputo on Renewing Nuclear Power Plant Operating Licenses—Environmental Review</HD> The purpose of the first license renewal generic environmental impact statement (LR GEIS) in 1996 was to improve regulatory efficiency in environmental reviews for license renewals “. . . by drawing on the considerable experience of operating nuclear power reactors to generically assess many of the environmental impacts that are likely to be associated with license renewal” resulting lower costs for both license renewal applicants and the agency. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> The use of the LR GEIS was expected to result in improved focus on significant case specific concerns a more effective NEPA review for each license renewal. <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  Environmental Review for Renewal of Nuclear Power Plant Operating Licenses; Final Rule, 61 FR 28467, June 5, 1996. </FTNT> Today the Commission finalizes the rulemaking “Renewing Nuclear Power Plant Operating Licenses—Environmental Review” with all Commissioners agreeing that Revision 2 to NUREG-1437, “Generic Environmental Impact Statement for License Renewal of Nuclear Power Plants,” appropriately considers the environmental impacts of license renewal of nuclear power plants licensed as of June 30, 1995. Because of this, licensees of such plants may rely on the LR GEIS in the preparation of their environmental reports under § 51.53(c) in connection with their applications for license renewal and subsequent license renewal. In addition, the NRC must prepare a supplement to the LR GEIS as a part of the environmental review of those applications. This rulemaking was necessary because of the Commission's reversal in its adjudicative role of its prior holistic view of Part 51 in favor of a plain language reading of the wording of a single paragraph in the regulations. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> This action disrupted two renewed licenses that had been issued. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> The Commission then initiated a rulemaking to remove the word “initial” to clarify the applicability of the LR GEIS for subsequent license renewals, dramatically increasing the staff's environmental review workload with the additional work of the LR GEIS revision. <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>   <E T="03">Florida Power & Light Co.</E> (Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Units 1 and 2), CLI-22-2, 95 NRC 26, 31-2 (2022) (ADAMS Accession No. ML22055A496) (holding the 2013 LR GEIS does not cover subsequent license renewal, stating section 51.53(c) narrows the scope only to those applicants seeking an <E T="03">initial</E> renewed license, and acknowledging that there is language in the regulatory analysis for the 2013 revisions to Part 51 that would support a contrary interpretation). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">See Florida Power & Light Co.,</E> CLI-22-2, 95 NRC at 36 (stating that the licensee could “maintain its current subsequently renewed licenses, but with shortened terms to match the end dates of the previous licenses ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> July 19, 2032, and April 10, 2033, for Units 3 and 4, respectively) until completion of the NEPA analysis.”); <E T="03">Exelon Generation Co.</E> (Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station, Units 2 and 3), CLI-22-4, 95 NRC 44, 46 (2022) (modifying the expiration date of the licenses for Units 2 and 3 to 2033 and 2034, respectively). </FTNT> This action also precluded any subsequent license renewal applicants from using the LR GEIS in their applications while under revision, injecting considerable uncertainty into the nuclear planning process. As applicants wrestled with this protracted uncertainty, some potential applicants delayed filing their applications pending completion of the revision in order to rely on it. Others initially chose to delay and then apparently reconsidered, choosing instead to revise their applications to include a complete environmental report without the benefit of the LR GEIS. As business decisions were revised to address continuing uncertainty, the staff's workload management was complicated further. As a result, the Commission has unjustifiably undermined the reliability of license renewal reviews and, thus, the stability of the nuclear operational and planning processes as noted in correspondence from Senators Capito and Ricketts: <EXTRACT> The Commission's misguided 2022 reversal of previously issued SLRs [subsequent license renewals] resulted in a cascading delay that impedes the ability for nuclear utilities to make long-term planning decisions and support those decisions with necessary investments. <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>  Letter from Hon. Shelley Moore Capito, Ranking Member, Committee on Environment and Public Works and Hon. Pete Ricketts, Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate, and Nuclear Safety, Committee on Environment and Public Works, to Chairman Christopher T. Hanson (Nov. 1, 2023), available at <E T="03">https://subscriber.politicopro.com/eenews/f/eenews/?id=0000018b-8b9a-da71-a98f-abff5d500000.</E> </FTNT> </EXTRACT> Unfortunately, the decision enshrined in this final LR GEIS fails to learn from this mistake and misses the opportunity to establish the stability of environmental reviews for a future, third round of license renewals. In CLI-20-3, the Commission chose a holistic interpretation of the 2013 LR GEIS upholding its applicability for subsequent license renewal and, indeed, <E T="03">any</E> license renewal. <E T="51">10 11</E> <FTREF/> The 2013 LR GEIS had long been expected to apply to subsequent license renewal since applications were anticipated in the near future. Indeed, the agency began receiving notices from the industry of the intent to file applications in 2015  <SU>12</SU> <FTREF/> with the first application filed in 2018. <SU>13 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 27k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━