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Nuclear Energy

Improving the Efficiency of NRC Power Reactor Licensing: Environmental Reviews

Reports by Matt Bowen & Rama T. Ponangi • January 27, 2025

This report represents the research and views of the author. It does not necessarily represent the views of the Center on Global Energy Policy. The piece may be subject to further revision. Contributions to SIPA for the benefit of CGEP are general use gifts, which gives the Center discretion in how it allocates these funds. Rare cases of sponsored projects are clearly indicated.

For a full list of financial supporters of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University SIPA, please visit our website at Our Partners. See below a list of members that are currently in CGEP’s Visionary Annual Circle. This list is updated periodically.

CGEP’s Visionary Annual Circle

Corporate Partnerships
Occidental Petroleum Corporation
Tellurian Inc.

Foundations and Individual Donors
Anonymous
Anonymous
Aphorism Foundation
the bedari collective
Children’s Investment Fund Foundation
David Leuschen
Mike and Sofia Segal
Kimberly and Scott Sheffield
Bernard and Anne Spitzer Charitable Trust
Ray Rothrock

Executive Summary

Achieving net-zero emissions in the United States by mid-century requires the rapid buildout of low-carbon energy infrastructure. One challenge to this rapid buildout is the environmental reviews required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which are part of federal approval processes for new energy projects. This process has increasingly caused significant delays and added costs, and the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) of 2023 was passed by Congress in part to address these issues through amendments to NEPA that impose timelines on environmental reviews.

For nuclear power, a low-carbon energy source that has a role in many US net-zero scenarios, environmental reviews are conducted by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) as part of its reactor licensing process. Because this process has at times been lengthy and costly, Congress passed the 2024 ADVANCE Act in part to require the NRC to implement its responsibilities under NEPA more efficiently. During the 2000s and 2010s, most of the environmental impact statements (EISs) these reviews produced would not have complied with NEPA’s new FRA timeline (two years or fewer) and page limit (150, or in extraordinary cases 300). More recent NRC environmental reviews for test reactor deployments have been somewhat quicker and had shorter review documents, perhaps a recognition by the agency that the efficiency of this process needed improvement.

This report, part of a series of publications on nuclear licensing reform at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University SIPA, focuses on how the NRC can fulfill the new legal mandates on time and page limits for environmental reviews and in general improve the efficiency of these reviews. The report demonstrates that earlier (1970s–80s) environmental reviews for nuclear power reactors licensed under the 10 CFR 50 licensing pathway took less time and generated shorter review documents than those conducted under 10 CFR 52 during the 2000s and 2010s. The latter reviews—all of which were for large light water reactor projects—also utilized substantial NRC resources, thereby incurring significant costs to the applicants. None of these reviews found that the reactor projects were expected to create what the NRC calls “large adverse” environmental impacts, which could destabilize environmental resources. Although some “moderate adverse” impacts were identified, they typically came from unavoidable elements such as new transmission lines and traffic that would result from any large construction project. And beneficial impacts always came in the form of jobs and taxes. At the very least, these findings raise questions about the allocation of time and resources to various aspects of the NRC’s environmental review.

The report concludes with policy pathways for the NRC that could help make its environmental reviews more efficient without compromising quality. Specifically, the NRC can:

  • Pare down two analytical sections of the EIS—the need for power and alternatives chapters—which are not currently adding much value, especially commensurate with their length.
  • Use a generic environmental impact statement (GEIS) approach—which has been effective for reactor license renewals and involves dividing the environmental review into issues that are expected to be generic for new reactor projects and therefore can be examined in a simplified manner and issues that need more in-depth, project-specific evaluations—for new reactor licensing.
  • Use the more concise environmental assessment (EA) review instrument instead of an EIS for subsequent deployments of a reactor at the same site or to sites with operating reactors or retiring coal plants, as well as for micro-reactor deployments.
  • Remove the EIS requirement for every new reactor licensing from its Part 51 regulations, which would give the NRC more flexibility to tailor its reviews to the specifics of a given reactor project, better enabling in particular use of an EA instead of an EIS.
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Nuclear Energy

Improving the Efficiency of NRC Power Reactor Licensing: Environmental Reviews

Reports by Matt Bowen & Rama T. Ponangi • January 27, 2025