Agencies and Commissions January 25, 2018 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is proposing to amend the licensing, inspection, special project, and annual fees charged to its applicants and licensees. These proposed amendments are necessary to implement the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990, as amended (OBRA-90), which requires the NRC to recover approximately 90 percent of its annual budget through fees; amounts appropriated for Waste Incidental to Reprocessing (WIR), generic homeland security activities, and Inspector General (IG) services for the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, as well as any amounts appropriated from the Nuclear Waste Fund, are excluded from this fee-recovery requirement. The NRC is issuing the fiscal year (FY) 2018 proposed fee rule based on the FY 2018 budget request since full-year appropriations have not yet been enacted for FY 2018. The NRC is using $967.0 million for the total budget authority in the proposed fee rule because it has included an adjustment to account for funding of $15.0 million for the Integrated University Program, which was not included in the budget request, but has historically been included by Congress in the final appropriations bill. Based on that total budget authority, the NRC is proposing to collect $826.7 million in fees in FY 2018. If the NRC receives an appropriation providing a different total budget authority, the final fee rule will reflect the final appropriation.