The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has directed the agency staff to amend regulations for licensing “non-power production or utilisation facilities,” (NPUFs) to make licence renewal criteria more consistent with the limited risk such facilities pose to public safety.
A final rule will eliminate licence terms for research reactors and medical therapy facilities so that they will no longer need to apply for renewed licences to continue operating. Instead, they will be required to update their final safety analysis reports every five years. NRC currently licenses 28 operating research reactors, mostly at universities, that fall into this category.
NPUFs that qualify as commercial or testing facilities will continue to have finite licence terms and the final rule clarifies the licence renewal process for these facilities. NRC currently licenses one testing facility, at the National Institute of Standards & Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and has issued a construction permit for a second, the Kairos Power Hermes test reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The agency has also issued a construction permit to SHINE Medical Technologies to build a commercial medical isotope production facility in Janesville, Wisconsin.
The final rule will also revise the definition of a testing facility. Currently, any NPUF capable of producing more than 10 megawatts of energy is considered a testing facility. This prescriptive criterion will change to a more risk-informed standard of an accident dose rate of greater than 1 Rem. This final rule does not change the license renewal process for commercial nuclear power plants.
