Generic Environmental Impact Statement for Licensing of New Nuclear Reactors – Draft Report for Comment (NUREG-2249)
This publication has been issued for public comment. Comments will be accepted until December 18, 2024. To submit comments, please see Docket ID Number NRC-2020-0101.
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Publication Information
Manuscript Completed: September 2024
Date Published: September 2024
Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Washington, DC 20555-0001
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Abstract
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff prepared this generic environmental impact statement (GEIS) in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), as amended, to address the NRC licensing of the building and operation of new nuclear reactors in the United States. In this GEIS, the NRC staff uses the values and assumptions in a technology-neutral plant parameter envelope (PPE) for a new nuclear reactor to evaluate the environmental impacts of constructing and operating a nuclear reactor. In addition, this GEIS assumes that a new reactor might be built anywhere in the United States and territories that meets the requirements of the NRC’s siting regulations. To accommodate this broad range of siting possibilities, the staff developed a site parameter envelope (SPE) that provides limiting values and assumptions related to the site.
The purpose and need for this GEIS is to present impact analyses for the environmental issues that are common to many new nuclear reactors that can be addressed generically, thereby eliminating the need to repeatedly reproduce the same analyses each time a licensing application is submitted and allowing applicants and NRC staff to focus future environmental review efforts on issues that can only be resolved once a site is identified. The results from this GEIS will be codified in Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations Part 51. Applicants submitting licensing applications for new nuclear reactors may cite the regulation for those issues bounded by the PPE and SPE and related values and assumptions rather than presenting application-specific analyses. The NRC staff performing environmental reviews may cite the analyses in this GEIS for those same issues instead of addressing the issues individually in application-specific documentation. By developing this GEIS, the NRC staff expects to streamline the time and effort needed to complete environmental reviews under NEPA for most new nuclear reactors.
This GEIS evaluates the potential environmental impacts of 122 issues relevant to building and operation of a nuclear reactor. It identifies 100 issues as Category 1 issues. This number includes issues for which potential environmental impacts have been generically determined to be SMALL and adverse provided that the project is bounded by relevant PPE and SPE values and assumptions, and issues for which the impacts are beneficial. The GEIS identifies 20 issues as Category 2 issues and concludes that an application-specific analysis considering site-specific conditions is necessary for those issues. Finally, as discussed in Section 1.3.3.3, there are two issues that are designated as N/A (i.e., impacts are Uncertain), which are neither Category 1 nor 2. Upon receipt of an application for a new nuclear reactor, the NRC staff would prepare a supplemental environmental impact statement or other supplemental NEPA documentation for the proposed project.
In general, an application for a new nuclear reactor can refer to the generic analysis in this GEIS for any Category 1 issue without further analysis, if it demonstrates that the relevant values and assumptions in the PPE and SPE are met and there is no new and significant information to change the conclusions in this GEIS. If the relevant parameters and assumptions for a Category 1 issue are not met, the applicant would have to supply the requisite information necessary for the staff to perform a site-specific analysis. Applicants addressing Category 2 issues would have to provide all of the information typically needed to perform a site-specific analysis.
The NRC staff also addresses a No-Action Alternative where the staff would not issue this GEIS and would instead prepare individualized NEPA documentation when reviewing each incoming new nuclear reactor licensing application. The NRC staff concluded that this alternative was not environmentally preferable to the proposed action (development of this GEIS).
Page Last Reviewed/Updated Friday, October 04, 2024