Addressing Proliferation Concerns within the Existing NRC Regulatory Framework

Interested persons may petition the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to issue, amend or rescind any regulation in accordance with 10 CFR § 2.206. As part of the established practice of reviewing requests for rulemaking, the NRC staff will evaluate the petition for rulemaking and any comments it received and will either consider the petition for rulemaking in the NRC’s rulemaking process or deny the petition for rulemaking. On November 10, 2010, the American Physical Society (APS) submitted such a petition for rulemaking to the NRC requesting the NRC amend 10 CFR Part 70, “Domestic Licensing of Special Nuclear Material,” to require each applicant for an enrichment or reprocessing (ENR) facility license in the United States to include an assessment of the proliferation risks as part of the application for a NRC license. The staff considered the petition, public comments, information related to the current threat environment, and the existing NRC licensing framework for ENR facilities and on October 25, 2012 recommended NRC denial of the petition for rulemaking to the NRC Commissioners. On May 22, 2013, the NRC Commissioners approved the staff’s recommendations to deny the APS petition for rulemaking and the final decision was published in the Federal Register on June 6, 2013. This paper provides an overview of the APS petition, a summary of the NRC staff evaluation of the APS petition, overview of how NRC’s existing comprehensive regulations for licensing, oversight and security of nuclear facilities protect classified information, nuclear materials and technology, and why a specific assessment of the proliferation risk by a license applicant is not warranted.