[Federal Register Volume 76, Number 204 (Friday, October 21, 2011)]
[Notices]
[Page 65541]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2011-27338]
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NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
[NRC-2009-0263]
Assuring the Availability of Funds for Decommissioning Nuclear
Reactors
AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
ACTION: Regulatory guide; issuance.
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SUMMARY: The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC or Commission) is
issuing a revision to Regulatory Guide 1.159, ``Assuring the
Availability of Funds for Decommissioning Nuclear Reactors.'' This
guide provides guidance to applicants and licensees of nuclear power,
research, and test reactors concerning methods acceptable to the staff
of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for complying with
requirements in the rules regarding the amount of funds for
decommissioning. It also provides guidance on the content and form of
the financial assurance mechanisms in those rule amendments.
ADDRESSES: You can access publicly available documents related to this
regulatory guide using the following methods:
NRC's Public Document Room (PDR): The public may examine
and have copied, for a fee, publicly available documents at the NRC's
PDR, O1-F21, One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville,
Maryland 20852.
NRC's Agencywide Documents Access and Management System
(ADAMS): Publicly available documents created or received at the NRC
are available online in the NRC Library at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. From this page, the public can gain entry into ADAMS,
which provides text and image files of the NRC's public documents. If
you do not have access to ADAMS or if there are problems in accessing
the documents located in ADAMS, contact the NRC's PDR reference staff
at 1-800-397-4209, 301-415-4737, or by e-mail to [email protected].
The regulatory guide is available electronically under ADAMS Accession
Number ML112160012. The regulatory analysis may be found in ADAMS under
Accession Number ML112160013.
Federal Rulemaking Web Site: Public comments and
supporting materials related to this notice can be found at http://www.regulations.gov by searching on Docket ID NRC-2009-0263.
Regulatory guides are not copyrighted, and NRC approval is not
required to reproduce them.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Edward O'Donnell, Regulatory Guide
Development Branch, Division of Engineering, Office of Nuclear
Regulatory Research, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC
20555-0001, telephone: 301-251-7655; e-mail: [email protected].
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
I. Introduction
The NRC is issuing a revision to an existing guide in the NRC's
``Regulatory Guide'' series. This series was developed to describe and
make available to the public information such as methods that are
acceptable to the NRC staff for implementing specific parts of the
agency's regulations, techniques that the staff uses in evaluating
specific problems or postulated accidents, and data that the staff
needs in its review of applications for permits and licenses.
As a guidance document, this regulatory guide and its provisions
are not designed to be restrictive or to represent binding
requirements. The guide presents methods acceptable to the NRC staff
for complying with the decommissioning regulations. The NRC staff
recognizes that, in certain circumstances (e.g., to meet requirements
established by Federal or state economic regulatory agencies or to
comply with other applicable laws), other approaches may be necessary.
As a point of clarification, it is the NRC's position that licensees
who have existing license conditions relating to topics covered by the
final rule, ``Decommissioning Trust Provisions,'' dated December 24,
2002 (67 FR 78332), will have the option of maintaining their existing
license conditions or submitting to the new requirements.
II. Further Information
Revision 2 of Regulatory Guide 1.159 was issued with a temporary
identification as Draft Regulatory Guide, DG-1229. DG-1229, was
published in the Federal Register on June 30, 2009 (74 FR 31317) for a
60 days public comment period. The public comment period closed on
September 9, 2009. The Commission approved RG 1.159 subject to changes
which are spelled out in a Staff Requirements Memorandum dated October
25, 2010 (ML1029805650). Because of the nature of the changes, the
draft guide was reissued for comment on January 13, 2011 (76 FR 2425).
The NRC staff's responses to the public comments on DG-1229 are
available under ADAMS Accession Number ML112160035.
Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 13th day of October, 2011.
For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Harriet Karagiannis,
Acting Chief, Regulatory Guide Development Branch, Division of
Engineering, Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research.
[FR Doc. 2011-27338 Filed 10-20-11; 8:45 am]
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