Powertech USA, Inc.; Dewey-Burdock In Situ Uranium Recovery Project; Draft Programmatic Agreement

<NOTICE> NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 40-9075; NRC-2024-0129]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Powertech USA, Inc.; Dewey-Burdock In Situ Uranium Recovery Project; Draft Programmatic Agreement</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Nuclear Regulatory Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Request for comment. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is issuing for public comment a draft Programmatic Agreement (PA), “Draft Programmatic Agreement Between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, South Dakota State Historic Preservation Office, and Powertech USA, Inc. Regarding the Dewey-Burdock In Situ Uranium Recovery Project in Custer and Fall River Counties, South Dakota,” regarding Powertech USA, Inc.'s request to renew Source and Byproduct Materials License No. SUA-1600 for the Dewey-Burdock in situ uranium recovery (ISR) project in Custer and Fall River counties, South Dakota. The NRC staff is pursuing execution of a PA pursuant to satisfy its obligations under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, as amended (NHPA). </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Submit comments by January 20, 2026. Comments received after this date will be considered if it is practical to do so, but the Commission is able to ensure consideration only for comments received on or before this date. </DATES> <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-2024-0129. 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">Mail comments to:</E> Office of Administration, Mail Stop: TWFN-7-A60M, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555- 0001, ATTN: Program Management, Announcements and Editing Staff. 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> Diana Diaz-Toro, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001; telephone: 301-415-0930; email: <E T="03">Diana.Diaz-Toro@nrc.gov.</E> </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-2024-0129 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-2024-0129. • <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. • <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. <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-2024-0129 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 NRC is issuing for public comment a draft PA between the NRC, U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), South Dakota State Historic Preservation Office (SD SHPO), and Powertech. The NRC staff is pursuing execution of a PA pursuant to paragraph 800.4(b)(2) of title 36 of the <E T="03">Code of Federal Regulations</E> (36 CFR) to satisfy its obligations under Section 106 of the NHPA for Powertech's license renewal request for the Dewey-Burdock ISR. The Dewey-Burdock ISR project is located in Custer and Fall River counties, South Dakota, and has not been constructed. On March 4, 2024, Powertech, which is the United States-based wholly owned subsidiary of enCore Energy Corp., submitted a license renewal application to the NRC for the Dewey-Burdock ISR project in accordance with part 40 of title 10 of the <E T="03">Code of Federal Regulations,</E> “Domestic Licensing of Source Material.” Powertech requested renewal of its NRC license for a 20-year term. On March 31, 2025, Powertech updated its license renewal application. Powertech proposes to recover uranium using the ISR method where a liquid solution is injected into the ore body to mobilize uranium, which is then pumped to the surface and processed to produce yellowcake. The Dewey-Burdock ISR project would consist of processing facilities and sequentially-developed wellfields sited in two contiguous areas, the Burdock area and the Dewey area. On August 9, 2024, the NRC issued a notice for an opportunity to request a hearing and to petition for leave to intervene (89 FR 65401) for Powertech's request to renew source and byproduct materials license SUA-1600. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Discussion</HD> The NRC staff has determined a phased process for compliance with Section 106 of the NHPA is appropriate for this undertaking, as specifically permitted under 36 CFR 800.4(b)(2), Section 106 implementing regulations. Pursuant to 36 CFR 800.8, the NRC is coordinating its Section 106 process with its review under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, as amended. In accordance with 36 CFR 800.2(c)(1)(i), the NRC staff initiated its Section 106 consultation with the SD SHPO for this undertaking, including preparation of this PA, via letter dated January 24, 2025. In response to NRC staff's letter dated January 24, 2025, the BLM designated the NRC as the lead agency for compliance with requirements of Section 106 of the NHPA regarding the Dewey-Burdock ISR project pursuant to 36 CFR 800.2(a)(2). The NRC staff also invited the EPA to participate in the Section 106 process for this undertaking, and on November 14, 2025, the EPA designated the NRC as the lead agency for compliance with requirements of Section 106 of the NHPA pursuant to 36 CFR 800.2(a)(2). On January 24, 2025, the NRC staff notified the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) of the undertaking and invited the ACHP to participate in NHPA Section 106 consultation. By letter dated October 14, 2025, the ACHP notified the NRC that Appendix A of the Section 106 implementing regulations, “Criteria for Council Involvement in Reviewing Individual Section 106 Cases,” implementing regulations at 36 CFR part 800, does not apply to the undertaking and, therefore, its participation in the consultation to resolve adverse effects is not necessary. By letters dated January 24, 2025, the NRC invited 25 federally recognized Indian Tribes who may ascribe religious and cultural significance to historic properties that may be affected by the undertaking to participate in the Section 106 consultation and preparation of this PA. The NRC staff also invited Powertech, in accordance with 36 CFR 800.2(c)(4), via letter dated January 24, 2025. Additionally, in response to the NDN Collective's request dated March 14, 2025, the NRC invited the NDN Collective to participate as a consulting party in the Section 106 process for the undertaking. The NRC staff continued its efforts to engage in consultation with Tribes by sending emails and holding meetings to gather information related to identification efforts and coordinate meetings. On March 5 and 13, 2025, the NRC staff held closed government-to-government virtual tribal information meetings. The purpose of the meetings was to engage with and hear from Tribal representatives invited to participate in and consult on the Section 106 process. On May 2, 2025, ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 16k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━