NRC APPROVES GUIDANCE DOCUMENTS FOR LICENSE RENEWAL

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved three new guidance documents that describe methods acceptable for implementing the license renewal rule, as well as the process to be used by NRC in evaluating applications to renew the operating license of a nuclear power plant.

The guidance documents are:

1) Regulatory Guide 1.188 - Provides a uniform format and content for submitting information in an application for renewal of a nuclear power plant operating license. This document endorses a Nuclear Energy Institute guidance document (NEI 95-10, Revision 3) for complying with the NRC requirements in the license renewal rule. This document supersedes the draft Regulatory Guides DG-1104 and DG-1047 which were issued for public comment in August 2000 and August 1996, respectively, proposing to endorse earlier versions of NEI 95-10.

2) Standard Review Plan for Review of License Renewal Applications for Nuclear Power Plants (NUREG-1800) - Provides guidance to the NRC staff for performing safety reviews of license renewal applications. A working draft of this document, dated September 1997, has been available in the NRC's Public Document Room. The improved guidance incorporates lessons learned from the review of the initial license renewal applications, as well as clarifications resulting from the resolution of generic renewal issues.

3) Generic Aging Lessons Learned (GALL) report (NUREG-1801) - Provides a compilation of generic evaluations of existing programs to manage aging effects on plant structures and components, documents the basis for determining the adequacy of those programs and identifies where staff review should focus on whether existing programs may need to be augmented for license renewal. Where GALL determines that a program is adequate to manage certain aging effects for a particular structure or component, the report indicates that no further NRC review is recommended. Otherwise, the report recommends areas where the NRC should focus its review. The report reflects comments received from the industry and members of the public, and it is intended to be used in conjunction with the Standard Review Plan to focus the NRC safety evaluation. Even where the report recommends no further staff evaluation, the NRC would sample those program features as part of the inspection activities that verify the safety evaluation conclusions.

Draft versions of the documents were issued for public comment in August 2000, and a license renewal public workshop was held in September 2000 to facilitate comments. Written comments were received from 101 individuals, 15 public interest groups and 12 industry groups. The staff also held public meetings with stakeholders to discuss their comments. A fourth document, "Analysis of Public Comments on the Improved License Renewal Guidance Documents" (NUREG-1739), contains the NRC response to the stakeholder comments.

The Commission approved the guidance documents on July 2, 2001. The pre-publication versions of the guidance documents are available for public inspection and duplication at NRC's Public Document Room by calling (301) 415-4737 or 1/800/397-4209, through the NRC's Agency-wide Documents Access and Management Service (ADAMS), and on the agency's web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/REACTOR/LR/index.html. The final published versions of these documents are expected to be available about August 1, 2001, at NRC's Public Document Room, ADAMS and the agency's web site.

Additional information is available by calling Dr. Sampson Lee of the NRC's Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation at 301-415-1183. These documents will be described in greater detail in a notice to be published in the Federal Register by mid-August.

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Friday, December 05, 2008