Constellation Energy Generation, LLC; Clinton Power Station, Unit 1; Exemption

<NOTICE> NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 50-461; NRC-2025-1039]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Constellation Energy Generation, LLC; Clinton Power Station, Unit 1; Exemption</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Nuclear Regulatory Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice; issuance. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff has issued an exemption from the requirement in NRC regulations that would otherwise require the application for renewal of Facility Operating License No. NPF-62 for Clinton Power Station, Unit 1, to be referred to the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards for a review and report, with any report being made part of the record of the application and made available to the public, except to the extent that security classification prevents disclosure. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The exemption was issued on August 29, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Please refer to Docket ID NRC-2025-1039 when contacting the NRC staff about the availability of information regarding this document. You may obtain publicly available information related to this document using 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-2025-1039. Address questions about Docket IDs in <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> to Bridget Curran; telephone: 301-415-1003; email: <E T="03">Bridget.Curran@nrc.gov.</E> For technical questions, contact the individual(s) 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 Public 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 (if it is available in ADAMS) is provided the first time that it is mentioned in this document. • <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 (ET), Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Vaughn Thomas, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, telephone: 301-415-5897; email: <E T="03">Vaughn.Thomas@nrc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> The text of the exemption is attached. <SIG> <DATED>Dated: September 5, 2025.</DATED> For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. <NAME>Vaughn Thomas,</NAME> Project Manager, License Renewal Projects Branch, Division of New and Renewed Licenses, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. </SIG> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Attachment—Exemption</HD> <EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Docket No. 50-461; Constellation Energy Generation, LLC; Clinton Power Station, Unit 1; Exemption</HD> <FP> <E T="02">AGENCY:</E> Nuclear Regulatory Commission. </FP> <FP> <E T="02">ACTION:</E> Notice; issuance. </FP> <FP> <E T="02">SUMMARY:</E> The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is issuing an exemption from the requirement in Title 10 of the <E T="03">Code of Federal Regulations</E> (10 CFR) Part 54.25, “Report of the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards,” that would otherwise require the application for renewal of Facility Operating License No. NPF-62 for Clinton Power Station (CPS), Unit 1, to be referred to the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) for a review and report, with any report being made part of the record of the application and made available to the public, except to the extent that security classification prevents disclosure. The NRC, using the requirement in 10 CFR 54.15, “Specific exemptions,” (invoking the process in 10 CFR 50.12, Specific exemptions”), finds the criteria of 10 CFR 50.12 are met due to the special circumstance presented by Executive Order (E.O.) 14300 (90 FR 22587), “Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” section 4(b) (stating that review by ACRS of permitting and licensing issues shall focus on issues that are truly novel or noteworthy). </FP> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> Constellation Energy Generation, LLC (CEG) is the holder of Facility Operating License No. NPF-62 for CPS, Unit No. 1. The license provides, among other things, that the licensee is subject to all rules, regulations, and orders of the Commission now or hereafter in effect. CPS, Unit 1 is a General Electric boiling water reactor with a Mark 3 containment licensed to operate at 3,473 megawatts thermal. CPS, Unit 1, is located near Clinton, Illinois. On February 14, 2024, CEG submitted to the NRC an application for renewal of the CPS, Unit 1 Facility Operating License No. NPF-62, pursuant to 10 CFR part 54, “Requirements for Renewal of Operating Licenses for Nuclear Power Plants” requesting renewal for a period of 20 years beyond the current facility operating license expiration on April 17, 2027 (ML24045A026). A final decision on the application is expected on or about October 9, 2025. Under 10 CFR 54.25, “[e]ach renewal application will be referred to the [ACRS] for a review and report. Any report will be made part of the record of the application and made available to the public, except to the extent that security classification prevents disclosure.” The December 31, 1991 rulemaking that promulgated 10 CFR 54.25 (Nuclear Power Plant License Renewal, (56 FR 64943, 64966)) noted that review by the ACRS was desirable but such review was not required by statute. On May 23, 2025, the President issued E.O. 14300 (90 FR 22587), “Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” and section 4(b) of E.O. 14300 states that “[r]eview by ACRS of permitting and licensing issues shall focus on issues that are truly novel or noteworthy.” On August 29, 2025, the NRC staff issued a Safety Evaluation (SE) (ML25238A215) documenting the NRC staff's review of the application. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Action</HD> In light of E.O. 14300, the status of the review of the license renewal application for CPS, Unit 1, and the fact that the NRC staff found no “truly novel or noteworthy” issues in the application that would benefit from ACRS review, the NRC staff determined that a staff-initiated exemption to 10 CFR 54.25 was warranted and should be granted. Pursuant to 10 CFR 54.15, exemptions from the requirements of 10 CFR part 54 may be granted by the Commission in accordance with 10 CFR 50.12. Per 10 CFR 50.12(a), “[t]he Commission may, upon application by any interested person or upon its own initiative, grant exemptions from the requirements of the regulations of this part,” when certain conditions are met. Further, per 10 CFR 50.12(a)(2), the Commission will not consider granting an exemption unless special circumstances are present. Under 10 CFR 50.12(b)(vi), special circumstances are present whenever there is present any other material circumstance not considered when the regulation was adopted for which it would be in the public interest to grant an exemption, but if such condition is relied on exclusively for satisfying paragraph (a)(2), then the exemption may not be granted until the Executive Director for Operations has consulted with the Commission. The NRC staff has determined that those criteria are met and an exemption from 10 CFR 54.25 may be granted for the reasons explained below. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Discussion</HD> As described in 10 CFR 1.13, the ACRS was established by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (AEA), as amended. Among other things, the ACRS reviews and reports on safety studies and applications for construction permits and facility operating licenses and reviews any generic issues or other matters referred to it by the Commission for advice. Paragraph 10 CFR 54.25, as originally promulgated in 1991, requires that “[e]ach renewal application will be referred to the [ACRS] for a review and report. Any report will be made part of the record of the application and made available to the public, except to the extent that security classification prevents disclosure.” The December 31,1991 rulemaking notice explained (56 FR 64966) the background of the requirement thusly: Section 182.b of the AEA states: The ACRS shall review each application under section 103 or section 104b. for a construction permit or an operating license for a facility, any application under section 104c. for a construction permit or an operating license for a testing facility, any application under section 104a. or c. specifically referred to it by the Commission, and any application for an amendment to a construction permit or an amendment to an operating license under section 103 or 104a., b., or c. specifically referred to it by the Commission * * * Section 182.b does not explicitly refer to applications for renewal of an operating license as requiring ACRS review. However, The Commission believes that review by the ACRS is desirable. Accordingly, § 54.25 of the final rule requires ACRS review of a license renewal application. The Commission has not changed 10 CFR 54.25 since its initial issuance in 1991. Further, no subsequent amendments of the AEA have set forth a requirement for the ACRS to review an application for a renewed license. 1 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 20k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━