The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) “Draft Project Plan to Prepare the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to License and Regulate Accident Tolerant Fuel,” issued in early 2018, proposed four preparatory tasks. Task 2: ‘Fuel Cycle, Transportation, and Storage Regulatory Framework’ was to address out-of-reactor regulatory framework in support of 1) batch loading of Accident Tolerant Fuel (ATF) into NRC-regulated power plants, and 2) crediting the safety enhancements of ATF in the licensing basis of NRC-regulated power plant.
Following the issuance of the NRC’s first draft plan, Subcommittee 2 was formed under the NEI ATF Licensing Task Force to screen for potential ATF impacts in 10CFR70, 10CFR71, 10CFR72, various NUREGs, and fabrication/transport/storage-related Regulatory Guides. This document presents the results of the screening completed in 2018 by Subcommittee 2, which focused on a subset of these documents.
In September 2018, after the planned work of Subcommittee 2 for 2018 was essentially complete, the NRC issued Version 1.0 of the project plan. Section 8, Table 8.1 of the NRC project plan presents the regulatory and guidance documents identified by the NRC as potentially requiring changes for ATF. These are NUREG-1609 “Standard Review Plan for Transportation Packages for Radioactive Material,” NUREG-1617 “Standard Review Plan for Transportation Packages for Spent Nuclear Fuel,” NUREG-1520 “Standard Review Plan for Fuel Cycle Facilities License Applications,” and “Standard Review Plan for Spent Fuel Dry Storage Systems and Facilities,” and a link to 25 Interim Staff Guidance documents.