Department of Energy October 2008 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

This notice provides as the designation of Sarah J. Bonilla as the Performance Review Board Chair for the Department of Energy. This listing supersedes all previously published lists of the PRB Chair.

Western Area Power Administration (Western), a Federal power marketing agency of the Department of Energy (DOE), is publishing this notice of allocation procedures and call for applications from preference entities interested in an allocation of Federal electric power. Subpart C of the Energy Planning and Management Program (Program), which was developed in part to implement section 114 of the Energy Policy Act of 1992, provides for establishing project-specific resource pools and allocating power from these pools to new preference customers and for other appropriate purposes as determined by Western. These allocation procedures and call for applications, in conjunction with the Loveland Area Projects (LAP) Final Post-1989 Marketing Plan (Post-1989 Marketing Plan), establish the framework for allocating power from the LAP resource pool.

The Commission is revising its regulations to clarify its rules governing ex parte contacts and separation of functions as they apply to proceedings arising out of investigations initiated under Part 1b of the Commission's regulations. The revisions specify when Commission litigation staff and persons outside the Commission may contact decisional employees once the Commission has established proceedings on matters that had been investigated under Part 1b. The Commission also is revising its regulations governing intervention to clarify that intervention is not permitted as a matter of right in proceedings arising from Part 1b investigations.

This notice announces a meeting of the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB), Oak Ridge Reservation. The Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. No. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice of this meeting be announced in the Federal Register.

On September 18, 2008, the Commission issued an order proposing to clarify that the facilities within a nuclear generation plant in the United States that are not regulated by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission are subject to compliance with the eight mandatory ``CIP'' Reliability Standards approved in Commission Order No. 706. The date for filing comments on the Commission's proposal is being extended at the request of the Edison Electric Institute and the Nuclear Energy Institute.

The Department of Energy (DOE) announces the availability of the Draft Global Nuclear Energy Partnership Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (Draft GNEP PEIS, DOE/EIS-0396). The Draft GNEP PEIS provides an analysis of the potential environmental consequences of the reasonable alternatives to support expansion of domestic and international nuclear energy production while reducing the risks associated with nuclear proliferation and reducing the impacts associated with spent nuclear fuel disposal (e.g., by reducing the volume, thermal output, and/or radiotoxicity of waste requiring geologic disposal). Based on the GNEP PEIS and other information, DOE could decide to support the demonstration and deployment of changes to the existing commercial nuclear fuel cycle in the United States. Alternatives analyzed include the existing open fuel cycle and various alternative closed and open fuel cycles. In an open (or once-through) fuel cycle, nuclear fuel is used in a power plant one time and the resulting spent nuclear fuel is stored for eventual disposal in a geologic repository. In a closed fuel cycle, spent nuclear fuel would be recycled to recover energy-bearing components for use in new nuclear fuel. Six programmatic domestic alternatives are assessed: No Action AlternativeExisting Once-Through Uranium Fuel Cycle (open fuel cycle); Fast Reactor Recycle Fuel Cycle Alternative (closed fuel cycle); Thermal/Fast Reactor Recycle Fuel Cycle Alternative (closed fuel cycle); Thermal Reactor Recycle Fuel Cycle Alternative (closed fuel cycle); Once-Through Fuel Cycle Alternative using Thorium (open fuel cycle); and Once-Through Fuel Cycle Alternative using Heavy Water Reactors (HWRs) or High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactors (HTGRs) (open fuel cycle). DOE's preference is to close the nuclear fuel cycle, although it has not yet identified a specific preferred alternative.