Generic Environmental Impact Statement for Licensing of New Nuclear Reactors

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION <CFR>10 CFR Part 51</CFR> <DEPDOC>[NRC-2020-0101]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 3150-AK55</RIN> <SUBJECT>Generic Environmental Impact Statement for Licensing of New Nuclear Reactors</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Nuclear Regulatory Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule, draft guidance, and draft generic environmental impact statement; request for comment. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is proposing to amend the regulations that govern the NRC's environmental reviews of new nuclear reactor applications under the National Environmental Policy Act. The rulemaking would codify the generic findings of the NRC's draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement for Licensing of New Nuclear Reactors. The draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement for Licensing of New Nuclear Reactors uses a technology-neutral framework and a set of plant and site parameters to determine which potential environmental impacts would be common to the construction, operation, and decommissioning of many new nuclear reactors, and thus appropriate for a generic analysis, and which potential environmental impacts would be unique, and thus require a project-specific analysis. The NRC expects that both the proposed rule and the Generic Environmental Impact Statement for Licensing of New Nuclear Reactors would streamline the environmental reviews for future nuclear reactor applicants. The NRC is also issuing for public comment draft regulatory guide (DG), “Preparation of Environmental Reports for Nuclear Power Stations,” and “Environmental Considerations Associated with New Nuclear Reactor Applications that Reference the Generic Environmental Impact Statement.” </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Submit comments by December 18, 2024. Comments received after this date will be considered if it is practical to do so, but the Commission is able to ensure consideration only for comments received before this date. The NRC plans to hold three public meetings to promote a full understanding of the proposed rule and facilitate public comments. Public meetings will be held on November 7, 2024, November 13, 2024, and November 14, 2024. See Section XV, “Public Meetings,” of this document for more information on the meetings. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments by any of the following methods (unless this document describes a different method for submitting comments on a specific subject); 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-2020-0101. 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 individuals listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section of this document. • <E T="03">Email comments to: Rulemaking.Comments@nrc.gov.</E> If you do not receive an automatic email reply confirming receipt, then contact us at 301-415-1677. • <E T="03">Fax comments to:</E> Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission at 301-415-1101. • <E T="03">Mail comments to:</E> Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, ATTN: Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff. • <E T="03">Hand deliver comments to:</E> 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852, between 7:30 a.m. and 4:15 p.m. eastern time, Federal workdays; telephone: 301-415-1677. You can read a plain language description of this proposed rule at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/docket/NRC-2020-0101.</E> For additional direction 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> Stewart Schneider, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, telephone: 301-415-4123, email: <E T="03">Stewart.Schneider@nrc.gov,</E> Stacey Imboden, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, telephone: 301-415-2462, email: <E T="03">Stacey.Imboden@nrc.gov,</E> or Laura Willingham, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, telephone: 301-415-0857, email: <E T="03">Laura.Willingham@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> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Executive Summary</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Purpose of the Regulatory Action</HD> The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is proposing to revise its regulations to codify the findings of the draft generic environmental impact statement, NUREG-2249, “Generic Environmental Impact Statement for Licensing of New Nuclear Reactors” (NR GEIS). The draft NR GEIS analyzes the potential environmental impacts of the construction, operation, and decommissioning of a new nuclear reactor. The NR GEIS is intended to improve the efficiency of the NRC staff's environmental review of a new nuclear reactor application by identifying those potential environmental issues that are expected to be common, or generic, to the construction, operation, and decommissioning of many new nuclear reactors. If the Commission approves issuance of the NR GEIS, the NRC staff would be able to rely on the NR GEIS' generic findings when conducting a subsequent, project-specific environmental review for a new nuclear reactor if specific conditions are met. The proposed rule would codify these generic findings into the NRC's regulations in part 51 of title 10 of the <E T="03">Code of Federal Regulations</E> (10 CFR), “Environmental Protection Regulations for Domestic Licensing and Related Regulatory Functions,” thus making the NRC's licensing process for new nuclear reactors more efficient. Specifically, these findings would be codified into subpart A of 10 CFR part 51, which sets forth the NRC's regulations to implement its obligations under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  42 U.S.C. 4321 <E T="03">et seq.</E> (1969). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Major Provisions</HD> Major provisions of this proposed rule and guidance would include: 1. Addition of a new appendix C, “Environmental Effect of Issuing a Permit or License for a New Nuclear Reactor,” to subpart A of 10 CFR part 51 to codify the findings in the NR GEIS and state that, on a 10-year cycle, the Commission intends to review the material in this appendix and update if necessary. 2. Changes to the regulations for the preparation of environmental reports for new reactors (§ 51.50, “Environmental report—construction permit, early site permit, or combined license stage”) to provide the applicant with the option to use the NR GEIS. 3. Changes to the regulations for the preparation of draft environmental impact statements (EISs) for new reactors (§ 51.75, “Draft environmental impact statement—construction permit, early site permit, or combined license”) to require the NRC staff to use the NR GEIS in preparing its draft EIS if an applicant for a new nuclear reactor referenced the NR GEIS in its application. 4. Addition of new section (§ 51.96, “Final supplemental environmental impact statement relying on Appendix C to Subpart A”) to provide the NRC staff with directions on the preparation of final EISs that reference the NR GEIS. 5. Draft revisions to Regulatory Guide (RG) 4.2, “Preparation of Environmental Reports for Nuclear Power Stations,”  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> to provide guidance to applicants regarding the use of the NR GEIS. In addition, the NRC staff has prepared a draft interim staff guidance document, COL-ISG-030, “Environmental Considerations Associated with New Nuclear Reactor Applications that Reference the Generic Environmental Impact Statement (NUREG-2249)” to provide guidance to the NRC staff regarding the use of the NR GEIS. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  Unless stated otherwise, references to RG 4.2 refer to DG-4032, the draft revision to RG 4.2, which is being published at the same time as this notice. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Costs and Benefits</HD> The NRC prepared a draft regulatory analysis to determine the expected quantitative costs and benefits of this proposed rule and associated guidance. Assuming 20 applications over the next decade, the regulatory analysis concluded that, compared to the no-action alternative, the proposed rule alternative and associated guidance would result in undiscounted total net savings for the NRC and applicants up to $40.1 million or $2.0 million per application if the NR GEIS is fully utilized. The draft regulatory analysis also considered qualitative factors to be considered in the NRC's rulemaking decision. Qualitative aspects include greater regulatory stability, predictability, and clarity to the licensing process. The proposed rule would reduce the cost to industry of preparing environmental reports for new nuclear reactor applications by focusing resources on project-specific analyses. The NRC also would recognize similar reductions in cost and be better able to focus its resources on the project-specific issues during new nuclear reactor licensing environmental reviews. The NR GEIS could potentially be utilized for micro-reactors, but the NRC staff does not have sufficient information at this time to determine whether the proposed rule could potentially affect any small entities as defined in § 2.810, “NRC size standards.” Therefore, the NRC staff has included an initial regulatory flexibility analysis in Section VI, Regulatory Flexibility Certification, of this document and is requesting public comment on the potential impact of th ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 219k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━