By Matthew Bandyk

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has agreed with developers of what could be the next generation of nuclear power resources that the agency should spare small modular reactors from the same fees the agency charges much larger, conventional reactors.

The four commissioners of the NRC unanimously agreed with a proposal from the agency's staff to develop "variable" fees for small modular reactors, or SMRs, that would allow the fees to be adjusted based on megawatt capacity to reflect smaller size, according to a document released by the agency May 15.

The change could provide a cost advantage to the technology at a time when the developers are trying to convince potential customers that the in-theory simpler designs and smaller footprints of SMRs can make them cheaper to build and run compared to conventional reactors, despite the lower power output over which to spread the high fixed costs that come with nuclear power.

Large energy providers like Public Service Enterprise Group Inc., for example, have said that the multibillion-dollar investment required for a new large-scale nuclear plant is too much in current market conditions, but that an SMR could be more palatable — if indeed the technology can prove to be cheaper.

By law the NRC must recover 90% of its budget from annual fees on the reactors and other nuclear facilities it licenses, and the fees can be in the range of about $5 million for each reactor. Conventional reactors can be well over 1,000 MW in capacity, but proposed SMRs are typically under 300 MW.

The staff proposal being advanced by the NRC also could remove for SMRs the requirement that fees be assessed for each individual reactor at a nuclear plant site. That requirement could be especially costly for SMRs since sketches of the technology involve up to a dozen modules running together at one site. The NRC proposal would apply the fee to an SMR site as a whole.

NuScale Power LLC, the Oregon-based developer that hopes to be the first to apply for an NRC certification of an SMR design, said in a letter to the NRC that the change in the fee structure is needed "to ensure a fair and equitable annual fee."

The NRC commissioners' vote allows the staff to develop a rulemaking to change the fee structure, and NRC Chairman Stephen Burns said in his comments on his vote that he supports the staff's schedule to complete the rulemaking by February 2016. NuScale's decision to submit an application for a license for an SMR could be affected if the rulemaking is delayed beyond 2016, according to the developer's letter.

Union of Concerned Scientists Senior Scientist Edwin Lyman has said he thinks changing the fees for SMRs is "premature" because of unknowns about the technology that could mean that smaller does not necessarily mean less expensive to regulate. For example, part of the simpler design for SMRs is that they will need fewer control room staffers and not as large of an emergency planning zone as conventional reactors, but the NRC will need to develop new approaches to make sure those changes are safe, according to Lyman.

In his comments on his vote, Commissioner William Ostendorff said that the staff "may need to modify the equations and base fee in the future" as the agency gains more experience with SMRs.

The next cost-saving that SMRs could achieve involves the 10-mile emergency planning zone required around operating reactors. The NRC staff is looking at a proposal to reduce this zone for SMRs to simply the site of the plant itself. In the near future the staff will submit a paper to the commission with its ideas on this issue, according to NRC spokesman Scott Burnell.

NuScale is owned by Fluor Corp.