Consortium Provides Forum For Standard Plant Design and Licensing
03/04/08
Washington, D.C. — February 27, 2008 — Today’s submittal of a combined construction and operating license (COL) application by Entergy Nuclear and NuStart Energy Development for a potential single-unit GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) ESBWR reactor at the Grand Gulf site in Port Gibson, Mississippi, means that NuStart has played a role in five of the six complete applications submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission under the revised process for licensing new reactors.
In October of 2007, the Tennessee Valley Authority and NuStart submitted an application to the NRC that serves as the reference COL application for a Westinghouse dual-unit AP1000™ design at TVA’s Bellefonte site in northern Alabama.
In November, Dominion Virginia Power submitted a COL application that serves as the reference COL application for a single-unit GEH ESBWR at Dominion’s North Anna Power Station site in Virginia. NuStart worked cooperatively with Dominion on the development of the generic licensing work for the standard design.
Since then, Duke Energy, a NuStart member, used the NuStart reference document to prepare a site-specific COL application for its William States Lee III site in South Carolina that was submitted in December, and Progress Energy, also a member of NuStart, used the reference document to prepare its site-specific application for its Harris site in North Carolina that was submitted in February.
The Entergy application used the NuStart and Dominion’s ESBWR reference information to develop a site-specific application for Entergy’s Grand Gulf site.
“When you consider the cooperative work by the NuStart members and Dominion, you begin to see the industry’s commitment to work closely together to develop strong applications and to maintain the benefits of standardization,” notes NuStart President Marilyn Kray. “The NuStart consortium has provided the necessary forum to unify input to the reactor vendors regarding the standard design and to develop standard licensing applications to submit to the NRC.”
Kray points out that the Department of Energy's Nuclear Power 2010 initiative paved the way for the industry to work together to develop technical, regulatory, and other opportunities that can renew nuclear energy in the United States. NuStart has been at the forefront of these efforts and prominent in establishing quality, standardized license applications that use the NRC’s design-centered work group approach to focus the industry’s engineering and technical expertise on a specific reactor design.
The members of the NuStart consortium recognize that the NRC has a significant amount of work ahead reviewing the applications that have been submitted and in preparing for the additional applications expected in the next two years. NuStart believes the industry is obligated to submit quality applications and to have early and substantive interaction with the NRC in order to help it establish predictable review schedules that can identify and resolve complex technical issues as early as possible.
Members of NuStart Energy consortium are:
DTE Energy, Detroit, MI, Duke Energy, Charlotte, NC, EDF International North America, Washington, D.C., Entergy Nuclear, Jackson, MS, Exelon Generation, Philadelphia, PA, Florida Power & Light Company, Juno Beach, FL, Progress Energy, Raleigh, NC, South Carolina Electric & Gas, Columbia, SC, Southern Company, Atlanta, GA, Tennessee Valley Authority, Knoxville, TN, GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy, Wilmington, NC, Westinghouse Electric Co., Pittsburgh, PA