Approval of American Society of Mechanical Engineers Unconditioned Code Cases

<RULE> NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION <CFR>10 CFR Part 50</CFR> <DEPDOC>[NRC-2024-0163]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 3150-AL20</RIN> <SUBJECT>Approval of American Society of Mechanical Engineers Unconditioned Code Cases</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Nuclear Regulatory Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Direct final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is amending its regulations to incorporate by reference a regulatory guide that approves unconditioned code cases published by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). This action allows nuclear power plant applicants and licensees to use the code cases as voluntary alternatives to engineering standards for nuclear power plant components. These standards are set forth in the ASME <E T="03">Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code</E> and ASME <E T="03">Operation and Maintenance of Nuclear Power Plants,</E> which are currently incorporated by reference into the NRC's regulations. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The final rule is effective January 26, 2026, unless significant adverse comments are received by November 25, 2025. If the direct final rule is withdrawn as a result of such comments, timely notice of the withdrawal will be published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . 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. Comments received on this direct final rule will also be considered to be comments on a companion proposed rule published in the Proposed Rules section of this issue of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . The incorporation by reference of certain material listed in the regulation is approved by the Director of the Federal Register as of January 26, 2026. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Please refer to Docket ID NRC-2024-0163 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-2024-0163. 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">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 ADAMS Public 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> For the convenience of the reader, instructions about obtaining materials referenced in this document are provided in the “Availability of Documents” section of 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, Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. You can read a plain language description of this final rule at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/docket/NRC-2024-0163.</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> Nicole Fields, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, telephone: 630-829-9570, email: <E T="03">Nicole.Fields@nrc.gov;</E> or Jay Collins, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, telephone: 301-415-4038, email: <E T="03">Jay.Collins@nrc.gov.</E> Both are staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Obtaining Information and Submitting Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Rulemaking Procedure</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Discussion</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Section-by-Section Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Regulatory Flexibility Certification</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VII. Regulatory Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VIII. Backfitting and Issue Finality</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IX. Plain Writing</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">X. Environmental Assessment and Final Finding of No Significant Environmental Impact</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">XI. Paperwork Reduction Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">XII. Regulatory Planning and Review (Executive Order 12866)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">XIII. Congressional Review Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">XIV. Voluntary Consensus Standards</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">XV. Incorporation by Reference—Reasonable Availability to Interested Parties</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">XVI. Availability of Documents</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Obtaining Information and Submitting Comments</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Obtaining Information</HD> Please refer to Docket ID NRC-2024-0163 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-2024-0163. • <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 ADAMS Public 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> For the convenience of the reader, instructions about obtaining materials referenced in this document are provided in the “Availability of Documents” section of 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, 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-2024-0163 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. Rulemaking Procedure</HD> Because the NRC considers this action to be noncontroversial, the NRC is using the “direct final rule procedure” for this rule. This amendment is effective on January 26, 2026. However, if the NRC receives significant adverse comments on this direct final rule by November 25, 2025, then the NRC will publish a document that withdraws this action. If the direct final rule is withdrawn, the NRC will address the comments in a subsequent final rule or as otherwise appropriate. A significant adverse comment is a comment where the commenter explains why the rule would be inappropriate, including challenges to the rule's underlying premise or approach, or would be ineffective or unacceptable without a change. A comment is adverse and significant if: (1) The comment opposes the rule and provides a reason sufficient to require a substantive response in a notice-and-comment process. For example, a substantive response is required when: (a) The comment causes the NRC staff to reevaluate (or reconsider) its position or conduct additional analysis; (b) The comment raises an issue serious enough to warrant a substantive response to clarify or complete the record; or (c) The comment raises a relevant issue that was not previously addressed or considered by the NRC. (2) The comment proposes a change or an addition to the rule, and it is apparent that the rule would be ineffective or unacceptable without incorporation of the change or addition. (3) The comment causes the NRC staff to make a change (other than editorial) to the rule. For detailed instructions on filing comments, please see the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section of this document. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Background</HD> The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) develops and publishes the ASME <E T="03">Boiler and Pres ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 82k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━