System Energy Resources Inc.; Grand Gulf Early Site Permit; Early Site Permit Renewal Application

<NOTICE> NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 52-009; NRC-2025-1864]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>System Energy Resources Inc.; Grand Gulf Early Site Permit; Early Site Permit Renewal Application</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Nuclear Regulatory Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> License renewal application; exemption request; acceptance for docketing; opportunity to request a hearing and to petition for leave to intervene. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is considering an application for the renewal of the Grand Gulf Site Early Site Permit (ESP) No. ESP-002. The renewed permit would allow a construction permit or combined license application to reference the permit for an additional 20 years specified in the current permit. The current permit for the Grand Gulf Site expires on April 5, 2027. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> A request for a hearing or petition for leave to intervene must be filed by March 30, 2026. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Please refer to Docket ID NRC-2025-1864 when contacting the NRC 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-2025-1864. 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> 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> Carolyn Lauron, telephone: 301-415-2736; email: <E T="03">Carolyn.Lauron@nrc.gov</E> or Michelle Hayes, telephone: 301-415-8375; email: <E T="03">Michelle.Hayes@nrc.gov.</E> Both are staff of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Introduction</HD> The NRC has received an application from Entergy Operations, Inc., on behalf of Systems Energy Resources, Inc. (SERI), a subsidiary of Entergy Corporation, dated September 24, 2025, (ADAMS Accession No. ML25267A217), filed pursuant to section 103 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended (the Act), and part 52 of title 10 of the <E T="03">Code of Federal Regulations</E> (10 CFR), to renew ESP-002 for an additional period of 20 years. If the NRC renews ESP-002, NRC regulations would allow an application for a construction permit under 10 CFR part 50, “Domestic Licensing of Production and Utilization Facilities,” or an application for a combined license under 10 CFR part 52, “Early Site Permits, Standard Design Certifications, Combined Licenses for Nuclear Power Plants,” to reference the early site permit for an additional 20 years beyond the period specified in the current permit and subject to the terms and conditions in the renewed permit. The current permit for the Grand Gulf Site expires on April 5, 2027. A notice of receipt of the ESP renewal application was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on December 29, 2025, (90 FR 60763). If an application for a Construction Permit or Combined Operating License references an early site permit, the Commission shall treat as resolved those matters resolved in the proceeding on the application for renewal of the early site permit, except as provided for in paragraphs (b), (c), and (d) of 10 CFR 52.39. Among other provisions providing for early resolution of certain matters by an early site permit, pursuant to 10 CFR 52.79(b), if an application for a combined license (COL) references an early site permit, the final safety analysis report need not contain information or analyses submitted to the Commission in connection with the early site permit, provided that the COL application provides sufficient to demonstrate that the design of the facility falls within the site characteristics and design parameters specified in the early site permit. Pursuant to 10 CFR 52.29(a), an application for renewal must contain all information necessary to bring up to date the information and data contained in the previous application. The SERI application proposes to pilot the proposed alternative ESP renewal pathway detailed in Appendix A to NEI 25-06, which is currently under NRC staff consideration. The NRC staff has not completed its evaluation of this guidance. NEI proposed an alternative renewal pathway to provide the holder of an ESP with the option to make a business decision to defer bringing up to date the general, site safety, environmental, and other required information and data contained in its previous ESP application until a later time. The SERI application, as a pilot to this proposed guidance, does not bring up to date any information about the general, site safety, environmental, and other required information and data contained in its previous ESP application. To that end, the SERI application requests an exemption from the content of renewal application requirements in 10 CFR 52.29(a). The NRC staff has reviewed the SERI application for acceptability for docketing. The application relies, in part, on the acceptability of an associated exemption request from the requirements for the content of renewal applications in 10 CFR 52.29(a), which require that an ESP renewal application contain all information necessary to bring up to date the information and data contained in the previous ESP. The NRC staff has determined that the exemption request appears to contain sufficient information to enable the staff to begin its detailed review. Based on the NRC staff's determination that SERI's exemption request contains sufficient information for the NRC staff to begin its detailed review, the staff has determined that the application is acceptable for docketing as a request to renew the Grand Gulf Site ESP, provided that the renewed ESP would not provide finality under 10 CFR 52.39 for the general, site safety, environmental and other matters that would typically be resolved in a proceeding on the application for issuance or renewal of an ESP. Specifically, should SERI wish to reference the renewed Grand Gulf ESP in a future license application, SERI could submit all information necessary to update its ESP renewal to the NRC staff for its review in one of three ways: (1) in a request to amend the ESP to update the information; (2) in an application for a construction permit that references the ESP; or (3) in a combined license application that references the ESP. In each case, the adequacy of the updated information, which is not updated in this renewal application and is not requested to be resolved by this renewal proceeding, could be a subject of a hearing on the application. Therefore, the application to renew the Grand Gulf ESP is acceptable for docketing. The current Docket No. 52-009 for Grand Gulf Site ESP No. ESP-002 will be retained. The determination to accept the renewal application for docketing does not constitute a determination that a renewed permit should be issued and does not preclude the NRC staff from requesting additional information as the review proceeds. In addition, the determination to accept the renewal application for docketing as a pilot of the alternative ESP renewal pathway detailed in Appendix A to NEI 25-06 does not constitute an endorsement of NEI 25-06. The NRC may grant the request to renew the permit only if the NRC makes the findings required by the Act and the Commission's rules and regulations. In accordance with 10 CFR 52.31, the NRC shall grant the renewal only if it determines that: (1) the site complies with the Act, the Commission's regulations, and orders applicable and in effect at the time the site permit was originally issued, and (2) any new requirements the Commission may wish to impose that are necessary for adequate protection to public health and safety or common defense and security, necessary for compliance with the Commission's regulations, and orders applicable and in effect at the time the site permit was originally issued, or result in a substantial increase in overall protection of the public health and safety or the common defense and security, and the direct and indirect costs of implementation of those requirements are justified in view of this increased protection. The NRC staff will also complete an environmental review of the application and will document its findings in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, as amended, and the Commission's regulations in 10 CFR part 51, “Environmental Protection Regulations for Domestic Licensing a ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━