July 15, 2008

A race for winning reactor designs and approvals

Kennedy Maize

NRC: Running as fast as it can

While the vendors were running a marketing horse race, regulators and customers in Baltimore were describing a similar contest in the world of regulation.

The NRC’s Patrick Madden—a key policy official in the new licensing regime—launched the horse race metaphor. He said what’s now confronting the industry and regulators is the equivalent of a simultaneous Triple Crown: the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont all run at the same time.

What faces the nuclear industry as it attempts to license and build a new generation of plants, the ELECTRIC POWER sessions demonstrated, are multiple and simultaneous challenges: reactor design certifications, site approval on environmental and economic grounds, and approval of applications under the NRC’s unproven new combined construction and operating licenses (COLAs).

It’s a horse race. As reactor vendors trotted out their technologies, another race was under way: the COLA Cup—the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s combined operating license application process. “Standardization—that’s the bottom line,” said Andrea Sterdis, TVA’s manager of nuclear licensing & industry affairs. Source: POWER

Part of the process will be a flurry of litigation from state and local governments, local and national environmental groups, and unknown other litigants. The NRC’s Madden advised the ELECTRIC POWER audience that transparency and open communications are the keys to winning support for new plants, regardless of the clarity of the engineering and economic arguments. Without support from state and local governments, and from local citizens, siting new nuclear plants will be agonizing.

The process should work as follows. First a design certification for a standardized plant is approved by the NRC. Then a COLA that references the certified design is applied for. Once the NRC awards the license for the first of the standardized plants, additional license applications will reference the first license approval. The only remaining individual plant issues should be site-specific, largely environmental questions. “Standardization, that’s the bottom line,” said Andrea Sterdis, Tennessee Valley Authority’s nuclear licensing manager (see figure). “Without standardization, the COLA process can’t happen.”

Of course, it hasn’t exactly worked that way so far, as became clear in the nuclear track sessions. Constellation Energy’s plan for a new, AREVA-based unit at the existing Calvert Cliffs plant in Maryland has resulted in a two-pronged approach. AREVA’s EPR lacks NRC design certification, although plants employing the EPR are under construction elsewhere. So the NRC is certifying AREVA’s design at the same time as it is processing a COLA for the plant.

Both NRC and Constellation Energy officials acknowledged that riding the dual track for the license is a challenge. But the other COLAs lined up at the NRC’s regulatory doors in Rockville, Md., also pose challenges.

Indeed, as the NRC’s Madden described the process, his agency is engaged in a very difficult juggling act, with more than a dozen balls in the air: design certifications, COLAs, environmental reviews, and the like. Preventing them from crashing down will be a mighty difficult act. Let’s hope the NRC succeeds.