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Wednesday, the NRC staff held a public meeting related to emergency planning for SMRs and other new reactor technologies
Slides from the meeting can be found here.
A few observations from the meeting—
Although early in the process, if executed correctly, the NRC’s Emergency Planning rulemaking could significantly reduce costs for new small modular reactors, advanced reactors, and even medical isotope reactors.
There was significant discussion during the meeting on a number of areas, but in particular—
Whether the rule would be “risk-informed.”
How site-specific features would be factored into the rulemaking.
How proposed industrial facilities near a nuclear power plant would affect emergency planning.
The NRC staff made clear during the meeting that the rulemaking would be risk-informed and consequence-oriented, and would work to incorporate the safety advances provided by new reactor designs.
The NRC staff emphasized that it welcomes written comments as it moves forward with this rulemaking, and will lean on them in developing a proposed rule. Comments on the regulatory basis document are due by June 27, 2017.
Authored by Amy Roma and Sachin Desai.