The NRC has a busy year ahead of it in 2016. The agency is preparing to receive the first design certification for a small modular reactor by the end of the year from NuScale Power LLC, Stephen Burns, NRC chairman, said during an in-person interview with Bloomberg BNA Rebecca Kern. The NRC staff is also planning to issue a report in March as part of its Project Aim 2020 program which will outline how to re-baseline the agency mission and priorities and reduce staff to align with the fewer-than-expected new nuclear reactor applications it has received over the years, Burns said. Additionally, he discussed the prospects for interim storage of nuclear waste while the future of a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain remains in limbo. He also touched on the prospects of extending reactor licenses by another 20 years, bringing lifetime operations up to 80 years and making the U.S. fleet one of the oldest functioning operations in the world.
The small modular reactor is a light-water reactor. The basic design criteria in our regulations really contemplate the larger light water reactors. So with the NuScale reactor, for example, you would have questions on the footprint of the emergency planning zone. The commission has authorized staff to go forward and explore that. Given the safety case that the designer makes for the small modular reactor, you would not need a 10-mile emergency planning zone for it, because of its smaller size. With the small modular reactor, it is understanding what the technology is and in some places, it is the question whether we have the right footprint? Our staff and NuScale have had good communications over the years to try to evaluate some of these issues.
There is some uncertainty over the next few years, as particularly merchant plants face this question about their economics in the context of low natural gas prices and the structure of the electricity market itself.
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