Staged licensing: an essential element of the NRC's revised regulations

摘要

Over the past several years,Congress has directed the Department of Energy (DOE),the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC),and the environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to abandon their efforts under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA) [1] to assess an array of potential candidate geologic repository sites for the permanent disposal of spent nuclear reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste,to develop generally applicable radiation protection standards for geologic repositories.Instead,these agencies have been directed to focus their efforts to determine whether a single site located at Yucca Mountain,Nevada can be developed as a geologic repository while providing reasonable assurance that public health and safety and the environment will be adequately protected.