NRC pulls plug on 40-year license extension plan

What if the abuses now surfacing with the suspicous building collapse and tragic loss of life at the Surfside, Florida condominium were to occur at an operating nuclear power station? Too far fetched, you say?

On June 22, 2021, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) abandoned its review of an absurd industry suggestion to increase the operating license renewal period for power stations from 20 to 40-year extensions. "License renewal" has become the nuclear industry’s most viable “bridge to the future” by extending operating licenses to ever more extremes. We note that 90% of the NRC budget, while appropriated by Congress, is collected from industry through annual reactor licensing fees.

However, as the NRC staff decision halted their review of the 40-year interval it basically admitted that the agency could not reasonably assure that safety margins can be met as aging reactors deteriorate and materially break down for such an extreme period of operation. With 90% of the nation’s fleet approved for 20-year extensions out to 60 years and units now being approved out to 80 years, Beyond Nuclear documents in its presentations that NRC and the industry are already dangerously abusing the “reasonable assurance” standard in their license renewal review process for recurring extensions even using the 20-year interval.

Originally licensed to operate for 40 years, the NRC and an aging industry have been incrementally extending unit operations by 20-year intervals. Of the nation’s fleet of the remaining 93 units, 90% thus far have been approved to operate out to 60 years. The NRC is presently reviewing and approving industry applications for an additional “subsequent” extension of another 20 years out to 80-years. To the still further extreme, the NRC and industry are collaborating to see how they can extend reactor operations out to 100 years.

At a meeting with the Ohio-based Energy Harbor, aka FirstEnergy Nuclear Corporation (FENOC), on May 21, 2020, the nuclear utility wondered outloud what NRC staff thought of approving a license extension for the  Perry nuclear power station on Lake Erie by combining the “initial” 20-year license renewal period (40- to 60-years) and the “subsequent” 20-year renewal license renewal (60- to 80-years) into one application for a 40-year extension. The NRC picked up on FENOC's suggestion and expanded on the idea to increase the relicensing interval to give its licensees already approved for the “initial” 40- to 60-year renewal a shot at renewing out to 100 years.

NRC convened two NRC public meetings with presentations in January and February 2021 involving the regulator, industry and the public that are summarized in a June 22, 2021 memorandum.  Beyond Nuclear, an invited presenter and panelist in the public interest, spoke out against the 40-year extension and the 100-year license supported by the voice strong public opposition that called in.  Our presentation and slides over the two days documented that industry and NRC age management programs for safety-related systems, structures and components during the 20-year interval for the “initial” and “subsequent” license renew periods do not provide the necessary “reasonable assurance” as the extensions become more extreme.  Given that current safety oversight for 20 year intervals is dangerously inadequate, it makes no sense to take that to yet farther extreme, other than to promote the nuclear industry agenda over the public safety and environmental protection.  

Beyond Nuclear argues that the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) publicly released a technical letter report on contract with NRC in December 2017 recommending that in order for NRC to approve the “subsequent” operating license extension the federal agency needed to  “require” industry to conduct autopsies at decommissioning  reactors to gather and analyze the material state of “real world” aged samples strategically harvested from radiation embrittled reactor vessels, crumbling concrete containments and the hundreds of miles of deteriorating electrical cable that is otherwise inaccessible to inspection, maintenance and surveillance in those operating reactors now seeking extensions. Subsequent to the release of the PNNL report, publicly available for nine months, the NRC described it as a "draft" and suddenly pulled it from the PNNL government website as well as the Department of Energy's Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) and the International Atomic Energy Agency's International Nuclear Information System (INIS). NRC then scrubbed the technical report of the recommendation to “require” autopsies and deleted scores of references to “knowledge gaps” in industry age management programs. These programs are necessary to "reasonably assure" operational reliability and public safety during the license extension. The sanitized version of the DOE technical report was republished only on the NRC’s website in March 2019 without commenting on whether or how the agency justified deleting the recommendations and some 60 references to critical technical "knowledge gaps" for maintainning public safety and reliable operations in the renewal period.