NRC NEWS

 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 

 Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200

 Washington, D.C. 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov 

Web Site: http://www.nrc.gov

 

No. 07-069 June 4, 2007

NRC ISSUES FINAL LICENSING, INSPECTION AND ANNUAL FEES

RULE FOR FISCAL YEAR 2007

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is amending its regulations to reflect the licensing,

inspection and annual fees it will charge its licensees and applicants in fiscal year (FY) 2007.

The agency is required by Congress to recover for the U.S. Treasury most of its annual

appropriated budget through two types of fees. One is for specific NRC services, such as licensing and

inspection activities; this fee is calculated using an hourly rate reflecting time spent by staff performing

the service. The other is an annual fee paid by licensees, which recovers generic regulatory expenses

and other costs not recovered through fees for specific services. These fees are contained in NRC

regulations 10 CFR Part 170 (fees for licensing and inspection services) and 10 CFR Part 171 (annual

fees). These fees are paid to the U.S. Treasury and go into the general fund.

By law, the NRC must recover through fees 90 percent of its budget for FY 2007 (Oct. 1, 2006

- Sept. 30, 2007), less the amounts appropriated from the Nuclear Waste Fund for high-level waste

activities and from general funds for waste-incidental-to-reprocessing and generic homeland security

activities. The total amount to be recovered in FY 2007 is approximately $670.5 million, about $45

million more than in FY 2006.

A proposed rule for the FY 2007 fees was published Feb. 2 in the Federal Register, while the

NRC was operating under a continuing resolution at FY 2006 budget levels. The final rule, published

today, includes fees based upon the agency’s final FY 2007 appropriations.

The final rule establishes a single hourly rate of $258 in Part 170 for activities in both the

Nuclear Reactor Safety Program and the Nuclear Materials and Waste Safety Program. This represents

an increase from FY 2006 hourly rates of $217 for the reactor program and $214 for the materials

program. The increase reflects a revised estimate of staff hours spent on specific activities, such as

licensing actions, inspections and regulatory development. 

Annual fees will increase for power reactor licensees, but will decrease for most other types of

licensees. These changes reflect increasing agency resources for new reactor licensing and the removal

of approximately $33 million dollars from the fee base for generic homeland security activities.

(Generic activities are those that support many licensees or types of licensees.)

The final FY 2007 annual fees include the following:
 

Class/category of licenses FY 2007 Annual fee

Operating Power Reactors (including Spent Fuel 

 Storage/Reactor Decommissioning annual fee) ................................. $4,043,000

Spent Fuel Storage/Reactor Decommissioning ..................................... $159,000

Test and Research Reactors (Non-power Reactors) .................................. $76,300

High Enriched Uranium Fuel Facility .......................................... $4,096,000

Low Enriched Uranium Fuel Facility ........................................... $1,237,000

UF6 Conversion Facility ....................................................... $811,000

Rare Earth Mills .............................................................. $90,200

Typical Materials Users:

 Radiographers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $14,100

 Well Loggers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $4,400

 Gauge Users (Category 3P) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $2,700

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