By Jeff Beattie
In a regulatory change that would create new headaches for NRG Energy’s new reactors project at the South Texas Project nuclear plant, the NRC earlier this month issued a draft rule that would require already-approved reactor designs to be evaluated for possible changes to protect against airplane attacks, a switch from the commission’s previous plan.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s initial version of the rule, issued in April 2004, would have applied the new airplane-protection requirements only to new reactor designs that are currently seeking NRC design certification.
But the majority of comments protested that exclusion, “the staff agree[s]…the underlying objectives of the aircraft impact rule would not be fully achieved if a subset of future nuclear power plant applicants – namely, those applicants [for licenses to build new plants] who reference one of the four existing design certifications – are not required to comply with the aircraft impact rule,” NRC staff said in an Oct. 15 memo that was made public last week.
From among the 17 new reactor applications that NRC has received in recent months that change would affect only one–NRG Energy’s plan to build two Advanced Boiling Water Reactors (ABWR) at the Bay City, Texas, South Texas Project.
Unlike most of the other reactors utilities are planning to build, the ABWR has received NRC approval.
One other exception–Westinghouse’s AP1000 pressurized water reactor–has received design certification but is under NRC review for a license amendment that would require an aircraft impact assessment even without the Oct. 15 rule change, an NRC spokeswoman said Tuesday.
Although the new version of the aircraft rule expands the scope of affected new reactor projects, one basic and controversial feature of the rule remains unchanged: The new rule does not flatly require changes in reactor designs to protect against accidental or deliberate airplane attacks.
Instead, it requires new nuclear reactor applicants to assess potential effects of a large, commercial aircraft hitting the reactors and to “identify and incorporate into the design those design features and functional capabilities that avoid or mitigate, to the extent practical and with reduced reliance on operator actions, the effects of the aircraft impact on key safety functions.”
The rule also does not require aircraft impact assessment for existing nuclear plants. NRC has defended that decision by saying that the designs of existing plants, plus public agency protections at various levels, prove adequate protection.
NRC Commissioner Greg Jaczko voted against the initial rule last year because it did not require design changes, and was not specific enough about the standards reactor vendors must meet to demonstrate their designs can adequately withstand airplane crashes.
Last week, Rep. Ed Markey, a longtime nuclear industry critic and senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, blasted the latest version of the rule and said will try to change it.
“This draft rule is simply an inadequate, half-hearted attempt at regulating. I hope the commissioners will strengthen this rule before it is finalized,” Markey (D-Mass.) said in an Oct. 23 press release.
“Meanwhile, I plan to continue pushing to make my legislation, introduced with Senator [Hillary] Clinton, that would require new nuclear reactors to be designed to withstand the impact of a large commercial aircraft, become law so these decisions cannot be left up to the whims of the NRC,” Markey said.
Jaczko was overruled by NRC’s majority, and Markey has thus far been unable to implement safety and security rules at U.S. nuclear plants that are as tight was he would like.
However, both will be playing with stronger hands soon if Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama wins the presidency and Democrats increase majorities in the House and Senate, all of which current polls suggest is likely.
Markey’s power will increase, as he is a close ally of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). More significantly, Jaczko, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), could become NRC chairman under a Democratic administration, thus giving him substantial power to set the agency’s agenda.
As a bitter opponent of the Yucca Mountain proposed spent fuel repository in his home state–a project NRC is currently reviewing for possible licensing–Reid has taken a deep interest in the workings of the NRC and is virtually guaranteed to throw his weight behind a Jaczko chairmanship if Obama wins.
In another significant decision made in the draft rule, NRC decided not to use quantitative, dosage limits to measure the effectiveness of reactor protective features.
In an earlier version of the draft rule, NRC asked for feedback on whether applicants should have to describe how those features provide “reasonable assurance that any release of radioactive materials to the environment will not produce public exposures exceeding” certain exposure limits laid out elsewhere in NRC regulations.
Citing comments largely from the nuclear industry, NRC staff said it had decided against that approach, and to instead measure effectiveness by looking whether key plant safety functions had been compromised–although it descried those measurements as “objectives.”
“The NRC agrees that [agency] dose limits should not be used for the purpose of this rule, and that the concepts of maintaining core cooling, containment integrity, spent fuel cooling and spent fuel pool integrity must be addressed in the assessment; however, the NRC does not view the maintenance of these functions as absolute acceptance criteria which must be met by each design,” staff said in an enclosure to the proposed rule.
“Instead, they are objectives that are to be achieved to the extent that it is practical to do so…,” NRC said.
Jaczko was not the only commissioner who has called for the rule include more firm acceptance criteria. Commissioner Peter Lyons, a Republican, in a speech earlier this year called the initial acceptance criteria “very general” and urged that more firm ones be set.
In the meantime, the most obvious effects of the new rule changes would befall NRG’s STP project, which was significantly delayed after NRG Energy switched vendors earlier this year, from GE-Hitachi to Toshiba. That slowed NRG’s ability to provide NRC technical information needed to support the application, which NRG submitted in September 2007.
A spokeswoman for STP was not immediately available Tuesday to comment how NRC’s proposed regulatory change might affect the STP project.
“Implementation of the staff’s recommended approach for the currently approved design certifications will have a practical effect on one of the existing combined license applications: STP Nuclear Operating Co. application for a combined license for two ABWRs…,” says the proposed rule.
“Under the staff’s approach in the draft final rule, STP Nuclear Operating Co. will need to amend its [license] application” to refer to either an amended or a new design certification for the ABWR, NRC staff said.