Wyoming Amended Agreement - Application Process

The NRC provides assistance to States expressing interest in establishing programs to assume NRC regulatory authority under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended. Section 274 of the Act provides a statutory basis under which NRC relinquishes to the States portions of its regulatory authority to license and regulate byproduct, source, and certain quantities of special nuclear materials. The State Agreement and Liaison Programs Branch in the Office of Nuclear Materials Safety and Safeguards (NMSS) has the programmatic lead at the NRC for processing an Agreement application or amendment to an Agreement.

The State of Wyoming assumed regulatory authority over the regulation of uranium and thorium milling facilities, source material possessed at the milling facilities, and 11e.(2) byproduct material from the NRC on September 30, 2018. Wyoming's request for an amendment to their Agreement would allow the State to assume regulatory authority for source material recovered from any mineral resources processed primarily for purposes other than its uranium or thorium content. Once the Agreement process is completed, the NRC will transfer the licenses that authorize the possession of source material recovered from mineral resource processing (e.g., rare earth extraction) to the State of Wyoming. The process steps can be seen in the table below.

The NRC staff evaluates the State's Agreement materials program using NMSS Procedure SA-700, "Processing an Agreement" and its associated handbook. The staff's assessment will need to show that the Agreement materials program satisfies the Commission policy statement "Criteria for Guidance of States and NRC in Discontinuance of NRC Regulatory Authority and Assumption Thereof by States Through Agreement" (46 FR 7540; January 23, 1981 and 48 FR 33376; July 21, 1983). There are several steps in the Agreement process. The table below includes the steps in the process and provides the status for the State of Wyoming's amended Agreement application.