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Atomic energy technology, politics, and perceptions from a nuclear energy insider who served as a US nuclear submarine engineer officer

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Is nuclear reactor licensing process being improved as Congress mandated with NEIMA?

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NRC Advanced Reactor Licensing Vision

A panel of five experts and an experienced moderator addressed the progress being made in creating effective processes to license advanced and non-LWR (light water reactors) at an ANS Winter 2022 panel session titled “Licensing the Future: How the NRC is Approaching Advanced Reactors.” Four out of five of the panelists were cautiously positive and provided descriptions of actions being taken and objectives that are still aspirational.

Kati Austgen, Nuclear Energy Institute

Kati Austgen, who is leading the Nuclear Energy Institute’s efforts to coordinate the industry’s inputs for licensing process improvements, led off the presentations by laying out achieved progress and desired outcomes.

NEI’s primary goal for this effort is a process that enables the NRC to “approve safe designs as efficiently aa possible”. Objectives that will help achieve that overarching goal include the following:

  • Streamline regulatory processes to achieve much more timely and efficient applications reviews and oversight of new and advanced reactors
  • Resolve key generic technical or policy topics well before new and advanced reactor applications are submitted for NRC review
  • Revise or establish new regulations as quickly as possible to achieve a much more modern and efficient regulatory framework

Austgen emphasized the important concept that environmental reviews, while important, must not be a barrier to the deployment of significant sources of carbon free power and heat. Her talk ended with a summary of the industry’s goals for Part 53

  • Regulatory framework that is useful and thus used
  • Risk informed
  • Technology inclusive
  • Performance based
  • Safety without unnecessary regulatory burden
  • Efficient and timely licensing approvals
  • Greater licensee flexibility
  • Long term regulatory stability (Aside:

Mo Shams, Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Mo Shams, director of Advanced Reactor Licensing at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, spoke after Austgen. It was hard to disagree with his early comment even if it was meant to be in jest. “Earlier Steve [the panel moderator] asked ‘Why do we need licenses?’ I don’t know, but it gives me a job, so let’s go with that.”

He included some important words in his talk. He said that he and his team are as excited about the opportunities provided by advanced nuclear energy as anyone and said that his goal was to perform his job “in an enabling way” while remaining cognizant that he is not supposed to be an advocate. The role of his organization is to make safe use of nuclear technology possible. They want to give the public additional options and want to do their job in a way that returns value to the public.

He offered the following statement: “Our Vision: Creating new paradigms to make SAFE. use of nuclear technology possible.”

He provided some statistical details about the number of applicants in pre-application review (15), in license review (1) and who have the potential to receive operating licenses by 2027 (6+).

He briefly described the NRC’s interagency relationships and its international cooperation efforts. He talked about the progress being made, especially with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) to harmonize regulations and reviews. He concluded with a discussion about actions underway to strengthen the agency by focusing on the people that make it work. Their acronym is ADAPT

  • Augment – add staff and managers at optimal staff/supervisor ratio
  • Develop – train next generation of leaders and experts
  • Analytics – drive efficiency and enable scalability
  • Plan – future scenarios with bias towards agility
  • Team – train people to work collaboratively and synergistically

Ted Nordhaus, The Breakthrough Institute

Ted Nordhaus, who spoke immediately after Mo Shams, described himself as “as a skunk at a garden party” and shared some sharply critical observations. Nordhaus, founder of the Breakthrough Institute, was introduced to the audience as the leader of an environmental NGO with the ability to provide an independent voice in wide ranging discussions about nuclear energy without having the taint of being dependent on income from the industry.

Nordhaus said that the Breakthrough Institute takes no donations from the nuclear industry and described its positions on nuclear energy as “advocating for nuclear in the public interest as a critical energy and environmental technology.”

Not only is Breakthrough able to provide an independent voice in public discussions about nuclear energy, but its representatives are also more free to level direct complaints about the NRC compared to people associated with companies that are regulated by the NRC or who plan to be regulated by the NRC. It’s well understood within the industry that it’s unproductive to upset or anger a regulator that can control your destiny.

Aside: I can testify that one can get into hot water with corporate leaders by making public comments that might offend regulators, even if the statements are true. End Aside.

Following the conventional advice to public speakers, Nordhaus began his talk with a humorous remark. Ted apologized to the NRC’s Mo Shams for disrupting his presentation by dropping his phone. “I’m sorry about my phone, I was getting it out so I could take a picture of the Part 53 Transformative [advanced reactor license] slide with its windmill in the background.” The audience and the panelists chuckled.

Nordhaus then noted that the NRC staff had recently released a Part 53 draft for public comments. He described how the document is 1200 pages long, contains many prescriptive requirements that were cut and pasted from existing regulations, moves ALARA (As Low As Reasonably Achievable) directly into the regulation from its current status as the subject of Regulatory Guide 8.10, and adds qualitative health objectives that are firmly rooted in the linear, no-threshold dose model for radiation health effects.

A survey of advanced reactor developers showed that the overwhelming majority of them do not intend to use Part 53, opting instead for either Part 50 or Part 52.

Aside: Though Nordhaus did not mention it, there were numerous critical comments submitted after the draft Part 53 was released. According to Mo Shams’s presentation, the staff had been operating for some time under the belief that they could produce a final rule by 2024, but they have pushed their stretch goal to 2025 as a result of the need to resolve the large number of comments. By the NEIMA law, the agency still has a 2027 deadline. End Aside.

From his point of view, establishing a burdensome licensing process that is not optimized for efficiently reviewing reactor safety results in “down selecting not on best designs or best business plans.” Instead it chooses winners that have the “most patient investors with the deepest pockets or the greatest talent for rent seeking and getting various sorts of federal or government support.”

Nordhaus concluded his remarks by explaining why he and his organization are so passionate about creating an effective licensing process that is focused on enabling regulators that allow radioactive material to be used to protect public health and safety, protect the environment and contribute to the common defense and security of the United States.

Every reactor that we don’t build, license or commercialize increases public health burdens associated with the electrical system. Further results in higher CO2 emissions intensity. It adds to climate risks and also increases economic and geopolitical risks by failing to commercialize economically viable advanced reactors. The result of that is increasing US and global vulnerability to price volatility associated with coal, oil and gas.

Ted Nordhaus, the Breakthrough Institute, ANS Winter Nov 15, 2022

Following Nordhaus’s sobering commentary, Drew Peebles, Sr. Licensing Manager, Kairos Power, and Travis A. Chapman, Manager, U.S Licensing — X-energy, each described their company’s licensing approach and their interactions with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Drew Peebles, Kairos Power

Kairos Power is well into the process of obtaining a construction permit – the first step of a Part 50 license application – to build its Hermes 35 MWth non-power reactor at a site near the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. When Kairos submitted its CPA (construction permit application) for Hermes in Sep 2021, it was the first non-LWR reactor CPA ever submitted to the NRC. Under the current schedule and the actual progress made to this point, the CP should be issued within 21 months after the application was submitted.

Aside: A CPA was reviewed and issued for the Ft. St. Vrain high temperature gas reactor in 1967, but that was approved by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) about 7 years before the NRC was created. End Aside.

Peebles emphasized that the progress that his company is making with their application review is the result of careful preparation that included an extensive period of pre-application engagement with the NRC. That engagement included submitting a detailed product and licensing roadmap so the NRC could plan the necessary review resources, and exhaustive reviews of license requirements and design criteria that would be applied to the Hermes reactor. Kairos submitted topical reports for those two key areas as well as additional topical reports for licensing areas like methodology for a mechanistic source term determination.

Kairos has an interactive design and manufacturing process where they design, build, test and revise components and systems. Their representatives often point to Space-X as the inspiration for their design philosophy. They are applying that same thought process to their licensing interactions with the NRC.

Kairos is one of the advanced reactor developers that has no current plans to use the new Part 53 process. They have found a way to their desired goal through the existing process and will evaluated the option of shifting to Part 53 after it has been issued and has “some run time.”

Travis Chapman, X-Energy

X-Energy’s Xe-100 four pack power station design was one of the two major power plant recipients of the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Project. Under that program, X-Energy is tasked to begin operating its facility by the end of 2027, which is recognized throughout the nuclear community as a stretch goal that will need everything to go right the first time.

Chapman started off his presentation with a description of the Xe-100 and its technological pedigree. He pointed to the extensive testing and fuel qualification for “uranium oxycarbide, Triso-coated particle fuel” done by the Department of Energy’s Advanced Gas Reactor (AGR) Fuel Development Program.

Chapman provided a personal testimony about the NRC’s capability to understand and license high temperature gas reactors that use Triso coated fuel. He was on the NRC staff 15 years ago during preparations to review the Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP) and attended presentations from experts from General Atomics and PBMR. He has been involved with the industry’s continuing efforts to improve and modernize the advanced nuclear regulatory process since 2015. [You read that date correctly. Neutrons are the only thing that moves fast in the nuclear world.]

The technological maturity of the Xe-100 informed the decisions made for the licensing path chosen. Like the Hermes project, the Xe-100 licensing effort will use the two step Part 50 process.

The Xe-100 designers are confident that their plants are protected from damage that would release significant quantities of radioactive material by design based on physics, materials and dimensions. Their licensing challenge is to “prove the safety case assertions.” Chapman emphasized the word “assertions” in his presentation; until the safety case is proved and accepted, the NRC considers that its components are just applicant assertions.

Chapman’s then shared some thoughts and guidance for other potential applicants based on his interactions with regulators.

  • Regulatory certainty is correlated to the level of detail in submissions
  • Don’t be complacent based on positive regulatory feedback on high-level submissions
  • Understand the benefits and challenges of “non-negative” forms of feedback

After watching this session, I remain cautiously hopeful that the NRC licensing progress is not going to be on the critical path for the early demonstration projects. Especially under Part 50, it is possible to effectively license a construction project that can be underway while obtaining an operating license.

With careful preparation, a licensee can produce documentation, probably in the form of a topical report, that lays out the requirements and design criteria that apply to its particular form of non-LWR. A good place for new developers to start is a review of the Kairos topical reports. You can find links to those documents and the NRC’s feedback on those reports on the Kairos page of the NRC’s Pre-Application Activities for Advanced Reactors.

The NRC position is that they are well on their way to improving advanced reactor licensing by their efforts to create a new Part 53, but it’s a good idea to approach this topic with the attitude of the Show Me state.

What Does Westinghouse Bankruptcy Mean To Nuclear Energy Innovators?

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Steve Kuczynski, CNO, Southern Co. <br>Speaking to 7th Annual SMR and Advanced Reactor Summit
Steve Kuczynski, CNO, Southern Co.

Attendees at the 7th Annual International SMR and Advanced Reactor Summit in Atlanta, GA were intensely curious about the effect of Westinghouse’s decision to enter into a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization effort. They are also working hard to learn whatever lessons might be available to help them avoid similar situations.

What About That Westinghouse News?

Westinghouse has been a major nuclear energy company since the earliest days of the technology development. When Toshiba purchased the company a decade ago for $5.4 billion, it was seen as an indicator that the company believed in the future of nuclear energy in the United States.

Like almost everyone with a nuclear energy industry connection, many believe that the Chapter 11 filing is a big deal. Some feel certain that it will have an impact on their future. The problem is that no one has any real comprehension about what the effect will be. Sighs, laments and shoulder shrugs are common responses when the subject is introduced into a hallway conversation.

One of the attendees at the meeting left Westinghouse employment several months ago. When asked for a reaction about the decision to change jobs, the former employee stated that cartwheels might be in order if in different attire and if young enough to still be capable of cartwheels. Interpret that response as an expression of relief about not being personally involved in the angst that must be widespread within the company.

There do not appear to be any current Westinghouse employees at the event; Westinghouse made a decision a couple of years ago to put its SMR project on the shelf in order to concentrate its management focus on the more immediate opportunities to either build, maintain or take apart – decommission – large pressurized water reactors.

One attendee, Marvin Yoder, reintroduced himself and asked if I’d like a copy of his short book about his participation in an project attempting to introduce nuclear energy to the Alaskan “bush.” That started a reminiscence about Toshiba’s aborted effort to introduce a factory manufactured, 10 MWe nuclear power plant that could operate for 20-30 years without new fuel.

Like the larger light water SMR, the 4S project to supply manufactured reactors appropriate for small grids and remote areas was shelved because the company saw more immediate, and larger scale business opportunities in deploying its AP1000 MWe generation 3+ nuclear plant.

Four units under construction in the U.S. southeast have run into such lengthy and costly delays that Toshiba has recognized that the obligations of fulfilling the construction contracts represent a financial loss of roughly $6 billion. The bankruptcy filing is designed to cap that liability and protect the parent company.

A number of deeply experienced industry leaders at the summit have expressed some frustration and confusion about how the four projects could have gotten so far behind their projected schedules.

Several expressed the opinion that Toshiba and perhaps even Japan has an obligation to do whatever it takes to complete the projects. Those sentiments echoed a paragraph found in yesterday’s issue of the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Southern Co. CEO Tom Fanning, who flew to Tokyo ahead of Westinghouse’s bankruptcy filing, told the Wall Street Journa;l that thousands of Georgia jobs could be endangered if Toshiba doesn’t commit to paying billions in cost overruns.

“The commitments are not just financial and operational, but there are moral commitments as well,” Fanning told the Journal in an interview from Tokyo.

Shared Responsibility Among Several Entities

The situation cries for a higher level of understanding, blame sharing and cooperation. Without a serious effort to better recognize how the situation developed, it is fraught with the risk of every party to the project losing a great deal of money. It also presents the prospect of having four large, incomplete, and unproductive works of industrial art.

Projects that last for as long as building nuclear reactors in the U.S. are roughly analogous to extreme endurance competitions in which overall progress is the sum of all stages of the race. There is no magic reset button that allows recovery of time lost early in the race, even though the specific events that resulted in the lost time might have been forgotten by observers.

After conversing with a number of people at the summit, including a brief question and answer session with Steve Kuczynski, Southern Company’s Chief Nuclear Officer, it became apparent that it’s worth repeating a story about a major event whose effect on project cost and schedule should not be underestimated.

Knockdown Blow From Aircraft Impact Rule Imposition

The June 12, 2009 edition of the Federal Register gave notice of a seminal event in the sad saga of the U.S. AP1000 projects. Titled Consideration of Aircraft Impacts for New Nuclear Reactors; Final Rule, the announcement required a major redesign of the already certified AP1000. The rule was not applied to any existing facility or to any facility for which a construction permit had already been issued. Here is a key excerpt from that final rule.

In making these additions, the NRC is making it clear that the requirements are not meant to apply to current or future operating license applications for which construction permits were issued before the effective date of this final rule. This is because existing construction permits are likely to involve designs which are essentially complete and may involve sites where construction has already taken place.

Applying the final rule to operating license applications for which there are existing construction permits could result in an unwarranted financial burden to change a design for a plant that is partially constructed. Such a financial burden is not justifiable in light of the fact that the NRC considers the events to which the aircraft impact rule is directed to be beyond-design-basis events and compliance with the rule is not needed for adequate protection to public health and safety or common defense and security.”

The unrecognized implication of issuing this rule and choosing to apply it to projects that had not yet been issued a construction permit is that AP1000 projects had already passed several important decision milestones that made them vulnerable to exactly the kind of unjustifiable financial burden that the NRC stated that it was trying to avoid.

The sales team had already successfully sold the certified AP1000 design to two customers. Though the detailed design was not yet complete, and though no concrete pours or metal forming had begun by June 2009, the plant design was complete enough to provide the basis for a cost estimate. That estimate was solid enough to pass muster with several boards of directors and two public service commissions.

That is no small task for multi-billion dollar projects, especially those that are as controversial and as visible as firm priced orders for the first new nuclear plants in the United States in more than thirty years.

Here is a quote from a document describing the Vogtle 3 and 4 projects to Southern Company customers.

  • Georgia Power filed for an Application for Certification of Vogtle units 3 and 4 with the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) in August 2008.
  • The Georgia PSC approved the need and cost-effectiveness, granting approval to implement the proposed Vogtle expansion in March 2009.

Remember, the notice applying the requirement for an aircraft impact assessment, and making appropriate design changes to mitigate the projected effects of such an impact was not issued until three months after the Georgia PSC had invested six months into the review and approval of the project as described in the NRC issued Design Certification Rule for the AP1000.

It is difficult to put a precise figure on the time that the project consortium invested into the cost and schedule analysis before submitting it to the PSC, but it was probably no less than a year’s worth of work.

As it turned out, meeting the new rule ended up requiring three more iterations on the design document and raised several issues of contention including concerns about the revised heat transfer capacity, concerns about the innovative shield building construction process devised, and concerns about the validity of the testing regime for the steel concrete composite modules that make up the shield building.

Those and other related issues were not completely resolved until the issuance of the final design certification document in late 2011, more than 2.5 years after the PSC had approved the project using the previously approved design revision.

During that delay, engineers who should have been working on the detailed design so that it could be as complete as possible before construction start were diligently working on the revisions to the regulated parts of the design that they thought was already complete.

Since the changes had a significant impact on the facility structure, they altered the seismic analysis and had a substantial impact on the design of the foundations.

Why Did Project Participants Soldier On Instead Of Complaining?

As an outside observer, I cannot explain why the damaging decision was meekly accepted without either strong resistance or a complete revision to the project cost and schedule projections. Major components of the assumptions made for the cost estimates were invalidated by the design changes required to satisfy the regulators.

There were other contributing missteps in the nearly eight years that have elapsed since the NRC issued the Aircraft Impact Rule. It is difficult to imagine a reasonable resolution to the current situation that does not include an acknowledgement – along with some kind of financial contribution from the responsible parties – that the decision had a significant and unrecoverable impact on both cost and schedule.

Note: A version of the above was first published on Forbes.com. It is republished here with permission.

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