The Design Certification Deep Freeze

Figure 1. NRC Headquarters. Occupancy about 34% (Federal employees, June 2024.) I wouldn’t want to work in this building either. It’s worse on the inside.

In the NRC’s world view, making people poorer is unimportant. Global warming is not their business. Harm from alternate sources of electricity is not a consideration. Evacuation and exile costs can be disregarded. The only thing that counts is radiation harm, based on a harm model that is biological nonsense. It is a preposterously blinkered outlook; and it is costing humanity dearly.[Infallible Preacher]

I’m always reluctant to point out individual examples of the auto-genocidal nature of the NRC’s dictates, because it implies that we can ‘change’ the NRC incrementally. It this or that rule is nuts, just fix it; and in the end the NRC will be aligned with societal welfare. Nothing can be further from the truth. The problem is an all powerful bureaucracy whose incentives by design are anti-societal. And the people who gave that bureaucracy that autocratic power and those anti-societal incentives is us. The problem is us. We must change; and we must replace the current system.

But occasionally I stumble on a regulation that is so blatantly anti-societal that perhaps we can use it as an example for why the whole system must be replaced, not just a few individual regulations improved. The Design Certification deep freeze is such a rule.

Design Certification goes back to 1989. Before that every individual plant seeking a license had to start from scratch, even if the plant was essentially a copy of an already licensed plant. This meant the NRC was reviewing and reapproving the same design multiple times.

Under Design Certification, a vendor could work through the Design Certification process once, and then any plant could “reference” that Design Certificate in its actual license application. On the surface, obvious good sense. Below the surface, it’s not so clear. Vogtle 3/4 used the already Design Certified AP1000. How did that go?

Originally a Design Certification was good for 15 years, and then it had to be renewed. In September 2025, the NRC extended the Certification period to 40 years, claiming this would reduce regulatory burden and save $55 million over a 65 year analysis period.

Yesterday I learned something I did not know. A vendor can only change his Design Certification “not less than 12 nor more that 36 months before the expiration of the initial 40 year period”.[10 CFR 52.57(a)] The design must be frozen for 37 years. What possibly could be the intent of this limitation? Does the NRC expect that the initial design to be so perfect, that the vendor will learn that there is nothing to improve after building the first one? Does the NRC expect technology to remain static for 37 years?

Of course not. Even the jailhouse layers at the NRC, who call themselves engineers, are not that lobotomized. They knew that the requirement would force the vendors to apply for a brand new certification every time they wanted to improve their design.

There is only one possible explanation: bureaucratic security. The NRC was worried that Design Certification would so reduce the “regulatory burden” that their jobs would be endangered. The Vogtle 3/4 experience indicates that the bureaucracy has other ways of protecting itself; but who knows when we might need another layer of protection. We might call this defense in depth.

Last April, Westinghouse submitted a request to the NRC asking for a “renewal” of the AP1000 certification incorporating the design changes already approved during the construction and licensing of Vogtle Units 3 and 4. A “renewal” is the only legal way of changing the Design Certification.

On July 2nd, the Commission issued a one time exemption to Westinghouse allowing them to apply for a renewal of the AP1000 Certification more than 36 months before the 40 year expiry, saying “the exemption is authorised by law, will not present an undue risk to the public health and safety, and is consistent with the common defence and security”. Duh!

So we impose a regulation whose exemption does not present an undue risk to the public health and safety, and then grant exemptions on the basis of political expediency. I don’t know about you, but I’m really tired of this nonsense.