The Sunset Rule

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION <CFR>10 CFR Parts 2, 19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 50, 51, 52, 54, 55, 60, 61, 62, 63, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 81, 95, 110, 140, 150, 160, 170, and 171</CFR> <DEPDOC>[NRC-2025-0479]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 3150-AL39</RIN> <SUBJECT>The Sunset Rule</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Nuclear Regulatory Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is proposing to amend its regulations to insert a conditional sunset date into certain regulations in response to Executive Order (E.O.) 14270, “Zero-Based Regulatory Budgeting to Unleash American Energy.” </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Submit comments by January 2, 2026. </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 (please choose only one of the ways listed): • <E T="03">Federal Rulemaking Website:</E> Electronically at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the “Submit a comment” instructions. If you are reading this document on <E T="03">federalregister.gov,</E> you may use the green “SUBMIT A PUBLIC COMMENT” button beneath this rulemaking's title to submit a comment to the <E T="03">regulations.gov</E> docket. 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. Mailed comments must be received by the close of the comment period. • <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. Do not include any personally identifiable information (such as name, address, or other contact information) or confidential business information that you do not want publicly disclosed. All comments are public records; they are publicly displayed exactly as received, and will not be deleted, modified, or redacted. Comments may be submitted anonymously. Follow the search instructions on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> to view public comments. You can read a plain language description of this proposed rule at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/docket/NRC-2025-0479.</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> Maxwell C. Smith, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001; telephone: 301-415-1856, email: <E T="03">Maxwell.Smith@nrc.gov.</E> </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. Plain Writing</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Paperwork Reduction Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Regulatory Planning and Review</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-2025-0479 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-2025-0479. • <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, 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, Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Submitting Comments</HD> The NRC encourages timely electronic comment submission through the Federal Rulemaking website ( <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> ). Please include Docket ID NRC-2025-0479 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> The NRC uses the “direct final rule procedure” for rulemaking when the NRC anticipates the rule is unlikely to attract significant adverse comment because the rule is non-controversial. As explained further, this rulemaking would add a “sunsetting clause” to certain regulations many of which are outdated, seldomly used, or duplicative with other regulations. Moreover, the NRC will provide the public with an opportunity to provide additional information on whether the sunsetting provision should be extended for these provisions at a future time as well as provide Tribal consultation opportunities in compliance with NRC's Tribal Policy Statement (82 FR 2402; January 9, 2017). Therefore, because the NRC does not anticipate significant public comments on this rulemaking and considers this action to be noncontroversial, the NRC is publishing this proposed rule concurrently with a direct final rule in the Rules and Regulations section of this issue of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . The direct final rule will become effective on January 8, 2026. However, if the NRC receives significant adverse comments by January 2, 2026, then the NRC will publish a document that withdraws the direct final rule. If the direct final rule is withdrawn, the NRC will address the comments in a subsequent final rule. Absent significant modifications to the proposed revisions requiring republication, the NRC will not initiate a second comment period on this action in the event the direct final rule is withdrawn. 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. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> A comment is adverse and significant if: <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Administrative Conference of the United States, Adoption of Recommendations (60 FR 43108-43111; August 18, 1995). </FTNT> (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 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 to make a change (other than editorial) to the rule. For a more detailed discussion of the proposed rule changes and associated analyses, see the direct final rule published in the Rules and Regulations section of this issue of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Background</HD> Executive Order (E.O.) 14270, “Zero-Based Regulatory Budgeting to Unleash American Energy,” directs the NRC to issue a rule inserting a conditional sunset date into each of its regulations that are in effect as of the date of the E.O. (90 FR 15643; April 9, 2025) and were issued in whole or in part pursuant to the following statutes, as amended: the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. The conditional sunset date for covered regulations is to be one year after the effective date of the sunset rule. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 15k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━