Constellation Energy Generation, LLC; Dresden Nuclear Power Station, Unit Nos. 2 and 3; Exemption

<NOTICE> NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION <DEPDOC>[Docket Nos. 50-237 and 50-249; NRC-2025-1105]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Constellation Energy Generation, LLC; Dresden Nuclear Power Station, Unit Nos. 2 and 3; 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) is issuing an exemption from the regulation that would otherwise require the application for subsequent renewal of Facility Operating License Nos. DPR-19 and DPR-25 for Dresden Nuclear Power Station, Unit Nos. 2 and 3, respectively, 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 finds that the required criteria are met due to the special circumstance presented by Executive Order (E.O.) 14300, “Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” section 4(b) (stating that “[r]eview by ACRS of permitting and licensing issues shall focus on issues that are truly novel or noteworthy”). </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The exemption was issued on September 11, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Please refer to Docket ID NRC-2025-1105 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 2025-1105. 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 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> • <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> Mark Yoo, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001; telephone: 301-415-8583; email: <E T="03">Mark.Yoo@nrc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> The text of the exemption is attached. <SIG> <DATED>Dated: September 29, 2025.</DATED> For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. <NAME>Mark Yoo, </NAME> Senior Project Manager, Division of New and Renewed Licenses, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. </SIG> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Attachment—Exemption</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">[Docket Nos. 50-237 and 50-249; NRC-2024-0080]</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Constellation Energy Generation, LLC; Dresden Nuclear Power Station Units 2 and 3; Exemption</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> The Constellation Energy Generation, LLC (CEG) is the holder of Facility Operating License Nos. DPR-19 and DPR-25 for Dresden Nuclear Power Station (Dresden), Units 2 and 3, respectively. The licenses provide, among other things, that the licensee is subject to all rules, regulations, and orders of the Commission now or hereafter in effect. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued the initial operating licenses for Dresden, Units 2 and 3 on February 20, 1991, and January 12, 1971, respectively. Dresden, Units 2 and 3 are General Electric boiling water reactors with Mark I containments and a licensed thermal power level of 2,957 megawatts thermal each. Dresden, Units 2 and 3 are located in Morris, Illinois. On April 17, 2024, CEG submitted to the NRC an application for subsequent renewal of Facility Operating License Nos. DPR-19 and DPR-25 for Dresden, Units 2 and 3, pursuant to title 10 of the <E T="03">Code of Federal Regulations</E> (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 expirations of December 22, 2029, for Unit 2 and January 12, 2031, for Unit 3. A final decision on the application is expected on or before November 13, 2025. Under 10 CFR 54.25, “[e]ach renewal application will be referred to the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards 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 Executive Order (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 September 9, 2025, the NRC staff issued a Safety Evaluation (SE) (ML25251A146) documenting the NRC staff's review of CEG's subsequent license renewal application for Dresden, Units 2 and 3. Because the NRC staff identified no issues in this license renewal application review that are “truly novel or noteworthy,” the NRC is granting an exemption to the requirement in 10 CFR 54.25 to send the application to the ACRS for review. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Action</HD> In light of E.O. 14300, the status of the review of the subsequent license renewal application for Dresden, Units 2 and 3, and the fact that the NRC staff found no “truly novel or noteworthy” issues in the application that would benefit from an 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, “Specific exemptions,” 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 (EDO) 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 as well as facility operating licenses. The ACRS also reviews any generic issues or other matters referred to it by the Commission for advice. In addition, 10 CFR 54.25, as originally promulgated in 1991, requires that “[e]ach renewal application will be referred to the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards 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: <EXTRACT> 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. </EXTRACT> 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. 10 CFR 54.15, “Specific exemptions,” states that “[e]xemptions from the requirements of this part may be granted by t ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 20k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━