Nuclear ADVANCE act grants US regulator mandate to modernize
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is under intense pressure to modernize its licensing practices to include next generation technology, and the ADVANCE Act is seen as the mandate to help drive that change.
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The ‘Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy Act of 2024’ (ADVANCE Act), was signed by President Joe Biden after a near unanimous, bi-partisan, trip through the Senate and the House of Representatives.
The Act, which calls for a qualitative change in how nuclear power is regulated in the United States, passed the Senate 88-2 and the House by 393-13, a bi-partisan accord that is almost unheard off in a deeply divided U.S. legislative,
The NRC’s licensing process today is based on the needs and challenges posed by large light water reactors (LWRs), virtually the only kind of reactor built for civilian (rather than military) power generation in the last 50 years.
However, the new generation of reactors use state-of-the-art technology that developers say are inherently safe, run on more highly enriched uranium, are smaller in size and capacity, and are right for a standardization that would allow for factory mass manufacturing.
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This new wave of nuclear technology requires a new approach to licensing, say developers.
“There's a lot of stakeholders, including investors, utility companies and others, that see the need for nuclear power, but there's a lot of roadblocks in place, and many see the NRC as part of that,” says Andrew S. Poreda, a Senior Research Analyst at Austin, Texas-based Sage consultancy.
“We’ve moved past this idea of a Westinghouse AP1000 reactor, these big projects that are going over time and over budget, and it looks like (the ADVANCE act) is setting up the NRC for the future.”
Mission update
The new legislation focuses on improving regulatory efficiency, streamlines the licensing processes for new nuclear technology, introduces a prize for the first deployment of a next generation reactor – a return of the funds spent on licensing – and sets guidelines for licensing new, accident-tolerant and advanced fuels.
The Act also supports the NRC in international forums to help the development of the U.S.’s nuclear ambitions abroad and calls on the regulator to appoint up to 120 exceptionally well-qualified people for covered positions as well as 20 more term-limited positions.
The regulator has 18 months to develop risk-informed, performance-based strategies and guidance to license and regulate microreactors and must submit a report to Congress on manufacturing and construction of nuclear projects within 180 days.
The NRC has one year to update its mission statement, according to the Act.
“Changing the mission statement for the NRC is one of the most important things that I pushed for personally in the ADVANCE Act,” says Adam Stein, The Breakthrough Institute’s Director for Nuclear Energy Innovation.
Under the new mission, the NRC must continue the role of safety regulator while not unnecessarily limiting use of civilian nuclear energy or the benefits to society from that energy.
“It's the change in the culture that the NRC really needed. It didn't fix anything directly, but it made it clear that the agency really is working for the benefit of the public and now they have to consider that in their decision making,” says Stein.
“They didn't have to consider which way was the best way before, they just had to think about which way provided the most safety, even if one way would have been more limiting and the other way would have been more beneficial.”
How this new culture will be absorbed into the day-to-day running of the regulator remains to be seen, but much will rest on the shoulders of the new Executive Director for Operations (EDO), Mirela Gavrilas, appointed in July, says Stein.
NRC Rulemaking Process
(Click to enlarge)
Source: Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
Cutting costs, deployment times
In a June editorial, ‘It’s the Nuclear Regulation, Stupid’, The Breakthrough Institute’s founder Ted Nordhaus argued that reforming the regulator is the key to reducing costs and cutting deployment time without sacrificing safety measures.
‘Regulatory ratcheting’, or increased regulatory requirements, procedures, and paperwork necessary to license and build a nuclear power plant, after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 added to costs but has done little to improve safety for the industry, wrote Nordhaus.
“Insofar as this multi-step escalation of nuclear regulation has improved nuclear safety, it has done so at the margins of a technology that was already extraordinarily safe,” he wrote.
The expansion of the nuclear power industry to levels proponents believe is necessary – tripled capacity by 2050, according to the COP28 declaration – will require unprecedented social license, something analysts believe was granted by the bi-partisan Congressional support.
“The quality of the regulatory environment is a critical factor in any nation's ability to compete in advanced technology industries … (the votes in the House and Senate) send a pretty clean signal to the regulator that Congress wants the administration to be behind this,” says Stephen Ezell, Vice President, Global Innovation Policy, and Director, Center for Life Sciences Innovation at Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF).
The nuclear regulator must reform as other government agencies have, he says.
In 1985, the Federal and Drug Administration (FDA) took an average of three years to pass a new drug until it was called on to reform. Today, the FDA can make a safety and efficacy determination within an average of 10 months, with an additional priority pathway to just 6 months, Ezell says.
This is sharp contrast to a call by the Government Accountability Office (GOA) in July 2023 for the NRC to form a regulatory framework for the licensing of advanced reactors by July 2025.
“If we can do the complex pharmacology to understand if an advanced cancer or Alzheimer's drug is safe and effective within 10 months, then it shouldn't be taking the NRC two years to come up with a framework for licensing nuclear reactors,” Ezell says.
By Paul Day