Southern Bid to Streamline NRC License Amendment Process for Vogtle

摘要

Lurking behind the well-known problems at the Vogtle nuclear expansion project is a backlog of license amendment requests filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). These have received scant attention even as they have thrown more monkey wrenches into a project whose costs are rapidly rising as the completion date stretches further out. Southern Nuclear, Southern Company’s nuclear operating company, has taken steps to alleviate some of this regulatory delay by boldly suggesting a change to existing NRC rules that would allow it to take on more of the review work itself, rather than handing it over to the regulator in suburban Maryland. The NRC has so far completed 26 license amendments for Vogtle-3 and-4, dating back to a first approval in October 2012, and 16 more are under review. According to NRC spokesperson Scott Burnell, reviews have taken anywhere from 42 days after submission of an acceptable request, to over a year for a few that are close to, but have not yet been completed. The majority of license amendment requests are completed within about 6 months. “If there is a very complex and a firstof-a-kind request, it is likely to take more time to complete the review,” Burnell explained in an email to NIW.