The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Thursday that it would go ahead with amending its regulations to establish separate regulatory fees for light-water small modular reactors. The agency said it was establishing a separate fee structure because it anticipated it will soon receive SMR license applications. The Tennessee Valley Authority recently submitted to the agency the first early site application for SMR development.
The regulator simply said that “without this separate fee structure, a SMR would have been required to pay the same annual fee a large operating light-water reactor.” Under the new fee structure, NRC fees will be assessed "based on how much power it is licensed to generate."
The fee structure for SMRs complies with the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990, which requires that NRC fees be fairly and equitably allocated among its licensees. Under the variable annual fee structure, a SMR's annual fee would be calculated as a function of its licensed thermal power rating.
The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 also requires that the agency recoup 90 percent of its expenses by assessing various fees for its services to the nuclear power industry.
The fee structure covers light-water SMRs, because the light-water designs have been the focus of pre-application discussions “and are similar to the current U.S. operating fleet of reactors in terms of physical configuration,” the agency said in a Federal Register posting. Non-light-water reactors may be included in the future, however, the agency said.
Following steps for due process and public transparency, the agency published the proposed rule “Variable Annual Fee Structure for Small Modular Reactors,” in the Federal Register, effective Nov. 4, 2015, and held a public meeting twelve days later. The final rule will become effective June 23, following today's publication of the final rule in the Federal Register.