Generic Environmental Impact Statement for License Renewal of Nuclear Plants: Regarding St. Lucie Units 1 and 2 - Final Report (NUREG-1437, Supplement 11)
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- NUREG-1437, Supplement 11
Publication Information
Manuscript Completed: April 2003
Date Published: May 2003
Division of Regulatory Improvement Programs
Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Washington, DC 20555-0001
Abstract
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) considered the environmental
impacts of renewing nuclear power plant operating licenses (OLs) for a
20-year period in its Generic Environmental Impact Statement for License
Renewal of Nuclear Plants (GEIS), NUREG-1437, Volumes 1 and 2, and codified
the results in 10 CFR Part 51. In the GEIS (and its
Addendum 1), the staff identifies 92 environmental issues and reaches
generic conclusions related to environmental impacts for 69 of these issues
that apply to all plants or to plants with specific design or site characteristics.
Additional plant-specific review is required for the remaining 23 issues.
These plant-specific reviews are to be included in a supplement to the
GEIS.
This Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) has been prepared in response to an application submitted to the NRC by the Florida Power and Ught Company (FPL) to renew 16 the OLs for St. Lucie Units 1 and 2 for an additional 20 years under 10 CFR Part 54. This SEIS includes the NRC staff's analysis that considers and weighs the environmental impacts of the proposed action, the environmental impacts of alternatives to the proposed action, and imitigation measures available for reducing or avoiding adverse impacts. It also includes the staff's preliminary recommendation regarding the proposed action.
Neither FPL nor the staff has identified information that is both new
and significant for any of the issues for which the GEIS reached generic
conclusions. The staff determined that information provided during the
scoping process did not call into question the generic conclusions in
the GEIS. Therefore, the staff concludes that the impacts of renewing
the St. Lucie OLs will not be greater than impacts identified for these
issues in the GEIS. For each of these issues, the staff's conclusion in
the GEIS is that the impact is of SMALL(a)
significance (except for collective offsite radiological impacts from
the fuel cycle and from high-level waste and spent fuel, which were not
assigned a single significance level).
Each of the remaining issues that applies to St. Lucie Units 1 and 2 is
addressed in detail in this SEIS. For each applicable issue, the staff
concludes that the significance of the potential environmental impacts
of renewal of the OLs is SMALL. The staff also concludes that additional
mitigation measures are not likely to be sufficiently beneficial as to
be warranted. The staff determined that information provided during the
scoping process did not identify any
new issue that has a significant environmental impact.
The NRC staff's recommendation is that the Commission determine that
the adverse environmental impacts of license renewal for St. Lucie Units
1 and 2 are not so great that preserving the option of license renewal
for energy-planning decisionmakers would be unreasonable. This recommendation
is based on (1) the analysis and findings in the GEIS;
(2) the Environmental Report submitted by FPL; (3) consultation with Federal,
State, and local agencies; (4) the staff's own independent review; and
(5) the staff's consideration of public comments received during the scoping
process.
