Resources Archive

Recommendations for Streamlining Environmental Reviews for Advanced Reactors

On March 2, 2020, Maria Korsnick testified before the the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy on the role that advanced nuclear technology will play in a decarbonized future

The U.S. nuclear power industry has consistently improved performance over the past 20 years. This performance manifests itself in many dimensions, including worker safety, public safety and plant reliability. There are many factors influencing this improvement including the cultivation of a strong safety and reliability culture by utilities, a strong independent nuclear regulator in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), an independent industry excellence organization in the Institute of Nuclear Power Operators (INPO), and the NRC’s adoption of a risk-informed safety focus. Over the past 20 years, improving plant performance has been coupled with the enhanced safety focus provided by a risk-informed approach that focuses resources on the most safety significant issues. Today, the U.S. nuclear industry is performing at the highest levels of safety and reliability in the world. NEI has collected all the relevant individual and aggregate performance indicators available from public sources, including NRC and INPO, spanning the past several decades. The purpose of this report is to illuminate the performance improvements achieved and demonstrate the connection between this improved performance and safety.

In February 2020, NEI submitted comments to the Maryland Senate Finance Committee on the Clean and Renewable Energy Standard (CARES) proposal.

NEI letter to Senate leadership, dated Dec. 23, 2019, encouraging support for the Nuclear Powers America Act. The letter highlights the importance of an investment tax credit for operating nuclear reactors in reducing carbon emissions.

Micro-reactors are very small nuclear reactors that are well suited to serve the power needs for markets that currently do not have access to clean, reliable, resilient and affordable energy, including remote areas and micro-grids. Micro-reactor technology and designs are rapidly maturing and the first micro-reactor applications are expected to be submitted to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 2020. The purpose of this report is to discuss changes in the way micro-reactors are licensed and regulated. This also identifies the need to address several policy and technical issues. Timely NRC consideration and feedback on the policy and technical issues associated with a performance-based, consequence-oriented regulatory framework is needed to inform design of micro reactors as well as business decisions affecting licensing and certification of micro-reactors over the next few years.

The process will allow licensees to make a radiological significance threshold determination for low levels of residual radioactivity, where the residual radioactivity does not challenge meeting the future license termination criterion of 10 CFR 20.1402 (25 mrem/yr) or state criterion for release.

Both the industry and the government responded swiftly and decisively to the TMI 2 accident, with the industry establishing INPO. Decades of research and scientific studies have shown no negative health effects on the population surrounding the plant.

The 2011 nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi and the 1986 incident at Chernobyl were both rated 7 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, but the accidents were starkly different in their cause, the governments’ response and health effects.

If we want to protect the climate, we need to support nuclear carbon-free energy with smarter regulations at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

NEI’s Principles for Clean Energy Policies demonstrate the measures necessary to provide a technology-neutral solution to climate change.

This efficiency bulletin will establish a streamlined and graded approach to the design change process.