The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission will seek to recover about $882.9 million in fees from licensees and applicants under its final fee recovery rule for fiscal 2016, the agency said in a statement Monday.
NRC said it estimates annual fees will be paid in fiscal 2016 "by licensees of 100 operating commercial power reactors, four research and test reactors, 122 spent nuclear fuel storage and decommissioning reactor facilities, nine fuel cycle facilities, 10 uranium recovery facilities and approximately 3,000 nuclear materials licensees."
The agency's final schedule of fees to recover 90% of the agency's budget, as required by statute, was published Friday in the Federal Register. Fiscal 2016 began October 1. The proposed rule was published for public comment March 23.
NRC said in the notice that the total fee recovery in the final rule, after various billing adjustments, represents an overall decrease in fee recovery of $12.6 million, or 1.4%, from the fiscal 2015 budget.
Annual fees in fiscal 2016 "decrease by 3.1 percent over last year for operating reactors, 6 percent for fuel facilities, 2.4 percent for research and test reactors, and 11.7 percent for spent fuel storage/reactor decommissioning licenses," the agency said in the statement. Fees are scheduled to increase for "most uranium recovery licensees" by 7.6%, NRC said.
The annual fee charged for each licensed operational power reactor is about $4.7 million in the final fiscal 2016 rule, down from about $4.8 million in fiscal 2015, NRC said in the notice.
NRC will decrease the fee it charges for staff time to $265 an hour from $268 in fiscal 2015.
