Press Release-11-067, NRC, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Issue Final Environmental Impact Statement for New Reactors at Virgil C. Summer Site

Press Release-11-067: NRC, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Issue Final Environmental Impact Statement for New Reactors at Virgil C. Summer Site

ML111091089
Person / Time
Site:	Summer
Issue date:	04/19/2011
From:	Office of Public Affairs
To:
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Press Release-11-067
Download: ML111091089 (2)

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NRC NEWS U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, D.C. 20555-0001 E-mail: opa.resource@nrc.gov Site: www.nrc.gov Blog: http://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov No.11-067 April 19, 2011 NRC, U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS ISSUE FINAL ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT FOR NEW REACTORS AT VIRGIL C. SUMMER SITE The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE),

Charleston District, have completed the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the Combined Licenses (COL) for the proposed Summer Units 2 and 3 reactors. The NRC concludes in the FEIS that there are no environmental impacts that would preclude issuing the COLs for construction and operation of the proposed reactors at the site, near Jenkinsville, S.C. USACE will use the information in the FEIS in making its federal permit decision in accordance with the Clean Water Act and Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899.

The FEIS will be available on the NRC website at:

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1939/. The NRC staff, in cooperation with USACE, began its environmental review with a scoping process that included public meetings near the site in January 2009. The staff issued a draft EIS for the proposed COLs in April 2010 and held public meetings in May 2010 to gather comments on the draft EIS.

The FEIS, with the NRCs conclusions, is also available via the NRCs electronic document database, ADAMS, by entering accession numbers ML11098A044 and ML11098A057 in the ADAMS search engine at: http://wba.nrc.gov:8080/ves. In addition, the Fairfield County Library, at 300 Washington St. in Winnsboro, S.C., will have a hardbound copy of the FEIS available for public inspection.

The NRCs publishing of the FEIS is only part of the overall Summer COL review. The agency staff continues to compile its final safety evaluation report (SER), which will include recommendations from the NRCs Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, an independent group of nuclear safety experts. The NRCs final licensing decision will be based on the FEIS and SER findings, along with a ruling from the five-member Commission that heads the agency.

The applicants, South Carolina Electric & Gas (SCE&G) and Santee Cooper, are applying for licenses to build and operate two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors adjacent to the existing Summer nuclear power plant, approximately 26 miles northwest of Columbia, S.C. The companies submitted the application March 27, 2008, and supplemented the applications environmental report to support their request on Feb. 13, 2009, and July 2, 2010. The AP1000 is a 1,100 MWe pressurized-water reactor design the NRC certified in 2006. The agency is

currently reviewing Westinghouses May 2007 application to amend the certified design. More information regarding the review is available on the NRCs website at:

http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/design-cert/amended-ap1000.html.

News releases are available through a free listserv subscription at the following Web address:

http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC homepage at www.nrc.gov also offers a SUBSCRIBE link. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when news releases are posted to NRC's website.