Interim Enforcement Policy for Enforcement Discretion for General Licensee Adoption of Certificate of Compliance Holder-Generated Changes

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION <CFR>10 CFR Part 72</CFR> <DEPDOC>[NRC-2025-0064]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Interim Enforcement Policy for Enforcement Discretion for General Licensee Adoption of Certificate of Compliance Holder-Generated Changes</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Nuclear Regulatory Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed policy revision; request for comment. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is issuing for public comments a proposed Interim Enforcement Policy (IEP) titled, “Enforcement Discretion for General Licensee Adoption of CoC Holder-Generated Changes.” This proposed IEP would allow enforcement discretion for certain general licensee violations related to their adoption of a change generated by the Certificate of Compliance holder. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Submit comments by April 28, 2025. Comments received after this date will be considered if it is practical to do so, but the NRC is able to assure consideration only for comments received on or before this date. </EFFDATE> <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-2025-0064. 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">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 (ET), 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-2025-0064.</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> Gerond A. George, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, telephone: 301-415-3882, email: <E T="03">Gerond.George@nrc.gov,</E> U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001. </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-2025-0064 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-2025-0064. • <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, 301-415-4737, or by email to <E T="03">PDR.Resource@nrc.gov.</E> For the convenience of the reader, instructions about obtaining materials referenced in this document are provided in the “Availability of Documents” section. • <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. <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-2025-0064 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. Background</HD> The Certificate of Compliance (CoC or certificate) is the NRC approved design for each dry cask storage system. Section 72.48 of title 10 of the <E T="03">Code of Federal Regulations</E> (10 CFR), “Changes, tests, and experiments,” establishes the conditions under which an Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) licensee, a monitored retrievable storage installation (MRS) licensee, a general or specific licensee, or a spent fuel storage cask certificate holder may make changes to the ISFSI facility, MRS, spent fuel storage cask design, or procedures, and under which they may conduct tests or experiments, without prior NRC approval. In addition to the 10 CFR 72.48 change review process, paragraph (b)(7) of 10 CFR 72.212, “Conditions of general license issued under § 72.210,” also requires the general licensee to evaluate any changes to written evaluations required by paragraphs (b)(5) and (6) of 10 CFR 72.212, using the requirements of 10 CFR 72.48(c). Moreover, there are various provisions in 10 CFR 72.212, such as paragraphs (a)(2), (b)(3), (b)(5)(i), and (b)(11), that require general licensees to ensure they use casks that conform to the terms, conditions and specifications of a CoC listed in 10 CFR 72.214. Therefore, if a general licensee wishes to adopt a change initiated by the CoC holder under the CoC holder's 10 CFR 72.48 change authority, then a general licensee must perform a separate 10 CFR 72.48 review as required by the regulations. Additionally, if a general licensee adopts a CoC holder's change made under 10 CFR 72.48 and that change is later determined to be non-compliant, the general licensee would also be in noncompliance with provisions of 10 CFR 72.48 and 72.212. The NRC seeks to implement a more efficient process in which the staff addresses CoC holders' apparent violations of the 10 CFR 72.48 change control process without pursuing an enforcement action against the general licensee for an apparent violation that is strictly due to the general licensee's adoption of a non-compliant change made under § 72.48 by the CoC holder. The NRC also seeks to implement a more efficient process for general licensees to review and adopt changes made by a CoC holder, pursuant to the CoC holder's § 72.48 change authority, as long as the general licensee does not need to make any site-specific technical changes. Accordingly, the staff is considering rulemaking, including potential interpretation of the applicable regulations, and revision of the implementation guidance. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Discussion</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Rulemaking</HD> The NRC published a final rule on October 4, 1999 (64 FR 53582), that revised 10 CFR 72.48 to clarify the specific types of changes, tests, and experiments conducted at a licensed facility or by a certificate holder that require evaluation, and revised the criteria that licensees and certificate holders must use to determine when NRC approval is needed before such changes, tests, or experiments can be implemented. The Commission approved the publication of the final rule in SECY-99-130, “Final Rule—Revisions to Requirements of 10 CFR parts 50 and 72 Concerning Changes, Tests, and Experiments.” The preamble to the final rule for 10 CFR 50.59 and 72.48 stated the following in Section O.1, “Part 72 Changes,” provided on page 53601: “The Commission envisioned that a general licensee who wants to adopt a change to the design of a spent fuel storage cask it possesses—which change was previously made to the generic design by the certificate holder under the provisions of § 72.48—would be required to perform a separate evaluation under the provisions of § 72.48 to determine the suitability of the change for itself.” As indicated by the rule and supported by the preamble, both the CoC holder and general licensee are required to perform an evaluation when implementing a change made by a CoC holder pursuant to § 72.48. The NRC staff may request that the Commission revise its regulations or interpretation of existing regulations to establish that CoC holders and general licensees have different obligations. The NRC staff may seek this change because both entities have separate quality assurance programs, and the NRC staff performs inspections of each change control process on a regular b ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 23k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━