GENERIC DESIGN SUPPORT ACTIVITIES
FOR ADVANCED REACTORS

1) Item 1: Final Infrastructure Assessment and Modern D&D Methods (RPT-3025306-000)

Document Overview: This report provides an evaluation of the current conditions and opportunities for potential reuse of existing Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant Site (PORTS) infrastructure based on information collected as part of the PORTS infrastructure assessment. The objectives of this assessment were to describe the availability and viability of the existing infrastructure including services, facilities, systems, and structures to support a future advanced reactor siting at a previously used site such as PORTS or other brownfield site. It also provides generic recommendations for Decontamination and Decommissioning (D&D) techniques that are based on recent commercial experience.

This report can be used to assist the stakeholders in the evaluation and any potential reuse of a brownfield site for new missions including advanced reactors.

2) Item 2: Licensing Basis and Final Environmental Impact Statement Utilization Assessment for Early Site Permit Application Development (RPT-3024998-000)

Document Overview: The Licensing Basis and Final Environmental Impact Statement Utilization Assessment for Early Site Permit Application Development prepared under this project provides a methodology for identifying information of potential use at a site being considered for reuse by siting a new advanced nuclear or small modular reactor when the site was previously developed for industrial use.

The Early Site Permit (ESP) is a licensing pathway available to nuclear power project developers under 10 CFR 52 “Licenses, Certification, and Approvals for Nuclear Power Plants.”

The ESP pathway allows a project developer to define a physical site and characteristics of a desired nuclear project and receive a decision from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regarding the acceptability of the proposed project at that site.

While an NRC issued ESP does not permit a developer to begin construction of a nuclear project, it provides finality for many of the issues which may delay or block development of nuclear power at a site. By resolving these issues early, at a relatively minor cost to the developer, the site then becomes a much more attractive location for deployment of a nuclear power project as the project risk is greatly reduced.

Useful information identified in completion of an Early Site Permit Application (ESPA) can fulfill content dictated by NRC guidance for future license applications. Types of information considered include any Environmental Impact Statements or Environmental Assessments performed at the site, Safety Analysis Reports performed for activities at the site, environmental permit information,
and Emergency Plan information.

3) Item 3: Portsmouth Site Licenses Assessment (RPT-3024413-000) Document Overview: The Portsmouth Site Licenses Assessment prepared under this project is to provide a thorough review of the federal, state, and local government permissions issued to and currently applicable to the PORTS site.

For any developer of a new advanced nuclear or small module reactor (SMR) at their site, it will be important to understand the scope of permissions that will need to be transferred from the current authority, pursued, or actions needed to mitigate the need for a permission. This helps develop a risk profile and identify useful permissions to maintain when taking over development of a site.

Additionally, for any licenses or permits pursued from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), part of the environmental review includes verification that the applicant understands the full scope of permissions required to undertake the proposed action at the site.

Specifically, this product provides a table summarizing current permissions of potential future benefit issued to the Portsmouth Site by non-Department Of Energy authorities, required future permissions for a nuclear plant at the site, potentially require future permissions, common permissions that won’t be required, and other existing permissions of interest at the site.

Document Overview: The Generic Plant Parameter Envelope for Early Site Permit Application template prepared under this project is to provide a model for communities who may wish to advance the opportunities for siting a new advanced nuclear or small modular reactor (SMR) at their site as part of their site reuse strategy. This template can be applied at any potential advanced reactor site including specifically at PORTS.

The Early Site Permit (ESP) is a licensing pathway available to nuclear power project developers under 10 CFR 52 “Licenses, Certification, and Approvals for Nuclear Power Plants”. The ESP pathway allows a project developer to define a physical site and characteristics of a desired nuclear project and receive a decision from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regarding the acceptability of the proposed project at that site.

While an NRC-issued ESP does not permit a developer to begin construction of a nuclear project, it provides finality for many of the issues which may delay or block development of nuclear power at a site. By resolving these issues early, at relatively minor cost to the developer, the site then becomes a much more attractive location for deployment of a nuclear power project as the project risk is greatly reduced.

One tool of an ESP is the Plant Parameter Envelope which allows the applicant to delay choosing a specific reactor technology until the Construction Permit Application or Combined License Application stage. The Plant Parameter Envelope chooses the bounding characteristics for various reactor designs and validates that the chosen site fits within those bounding characteristics.

5) Item 5: Generic Early Site Permit Application (RPT-3025281-001)

Document Overview: The Generic Early Site Permit Application template prepared under this project is to provide a model for communities who may wish to advance the opportunities for siting a new advanced nuclear reactor or small modular reactor (SMR) at their site as part of their site reuse strategy.

The Early Site Permit (ESP) is a licensing pathway available to nuclear power project developers under 10 CFR 52 “Licenses, Certifications, and Approvals for Nuclear Power Plants”. The ESP pathway allows a project developer to define a physical site and characteristics of a desired nuclear project and receive a decision from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regarding the acceptability of the proposed project at that site.

This Generic Early Site Permit Application template is intended to provide a model for communities that may wish to advance the opportunities for siting a new advanced nuclear or small modular reactor (SMR) at their site as part of their site reuse strategy. The ultimate benefit of the product would be for an energy community to progress through a staged project of completing the Generic ESPA template for their specific site and community. If the community found it in their strategic interests and capabilities, completing the ESPA template would produce a full ESPA suitable for submission to the NRC. Should the community proceed with submitting the ESPA to the NRC and receiving an ESP, such actions would tremendously reduce project risk for any potential developer at their site, greatly improving the likelihood of a nuclear project deployment at the former DOE site.

While a NRC-issued ESP does not permit a developer to begin construction of a nuclear project, it provides finality for many of the issues which may delay or block development of nuclear power at a site. By resolving these issues early, at relatively minor cost to the developer, the site then becomes a much more attractive location for deployment of a nuclear power project as the project risk is greatly  reduced.

The product is a “fill-in-the-blank” template which may be used by any applicant as the foundation of an ESP Application. The project team based the product on US law, NRC regulations, NRC guidance, and precedents set by the ESP applications which were ultimately approved by the NRC. By providing a complete narrative ESP application with the site-specific and project-specific inputs clearly identified and described, a candidate community which is interested in preparing an ESPA for their site can more efficiently evaluate the resources which will be required to prepare their ESPA. The narrative product provides the candidate community with an application body which has already proven acceptable to the NRC and avoids the expense of contracting the narrative application development to an outside consultant.

6) Item 6: PORTS-Specific Early Site Permit Application (RPT-3025660-000)

Document Overview: The Generic Early Site Permit Application template described by Item 5) above was partially exercised in 2022 to prepare the foundation of a future PORTS-Site-Specific ESP Application. The Project team utilized the human resources and data obtained over the course of the project to complete large portions of the Generic ESP Application template for a proposed development of a single reactor or combination of advanced nuclear reactors up to 1,000 MWthermal at PORTS.

This project activity benefited both the PORTS communities and other future users of the Generic ESP Application template by partially completing the Generic template with actual data. By going through the process of populating the ESP Application with real site-specific data, the project team identified numerous improvements to the template which were then incorporated in updated revisions of the Generic template (Item 5 above). Additionally, the project team identified and documented data resources commonly available to community reuse organizations at little to no cost (specific government databases, university resources, etc.). Important for the PORTS communities, the exercise did not identify any significant barriers to the deployment of advanced nuclear reactors at PORTS.

7) Item 7: EPRI Site Selection and Evaluation Criteria for New Nuclear Energy Generation Facilities (Siting Guide), 2022 Revision Content Summary (RFP-3025386-000)

Document Overview: The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) 2015 Siting Guide (EPRI 3002005435) provides the methodology and framework for developing a detailed, specific process for new plant site selection that can withstand regulatory review. Previously the EPRI siting guide along with other reactor siting guides in the industry and NRC regulatory guides included only the siting, building and operation of only light water reactors on greenfield sites. As a task of this project, EPRI has formally updated the 2015 Siting Guide to incorporate aspects of advanced reactor technologies including small modular and micro reactors, and expanded consideration of the reuse of brownfield sites, including former nuclear facilities. The EPRI Siting Guide has been reviewed and extensively updated and vetted by external EPRI technical advisories, industry subject matter experts and project team members for content, references, and data sources with respective to normal industry advancements and changes. This document summarizes those changes.

8) Item 8: EPRI Site Selection and Evaluation Criteria for New Nuclear Energy Generation Facilities (Siting Guide), 2022 Revision (Public Release)

Document Overview: The entire EPRI Site Selection and Evaluation Criteria for New Nuclear Energy Generation Facilities (Siting Guide), 2022 Revision is publicly available for free. It can be downloaded for use at the EPRI website.

9) Item 9: PORTS Geological Reference Documents

Publicly available geological documents used in this project to support various documents and information gathering are accessible at the below link.