NRC, U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS ISSUE FINAL ENVIRONMENTAL 

IMPACT STATEMENT FOR NEW REACTOR AT CALVERT CLIFFS SITE

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), 

Baltimore District, have completed the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the 

Combined License (COL) for the proposed Calvert Cliffs Unit 3 reactor. The NRC concludes in

the FEIS that there are no environmental impacts that would preclude issuing the COL for 

construction and operation of the proposed reactor at the site, near Lusby, Md. The 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 NRC’s publishing of the FEIS is only part of the overall Calvert Cliffs COL review. 

The agency staff continues to compile its final safety evaluation report (SER), which will include 

recommendations from the NRC’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, an independent 

group of nuclear safety experts. The NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board is currently 

conducting a proceeding on a challenge to the staff’s environmental review, as well as whether 

the applicant, Unistar, meets NRC requirements regarding foreign ownership. All of these items 

must be completed before the NRC can reach a final decision on the COL application.

Unistar has applied for a license to build and operate an Areva EPR reactor adjacent to 

the existing Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant, approximately 40 miles south of Annapolis, Md. 

UniStar submitted the application’s environmental report and associated information in July 

2007, and supplemented the report in Dec. 2007. The EPR is a large pressurized-water reactor 

with a design output of approximately 1,500 MWe. The EPR’s designer, Areva, filed an 

application on Dec. 11, 2007 to certify the design. More information regarding the NRC’s review 

of the EPR is available on the NRC’s website.

The FEIS will be available on the NRC website. The NRC staff, in cooperation with 

USACE, gathered comments from the community near the site in March 2008 during the 

environmental scoping process. The agencies issued a draft EIS in April 2010 and met with the 

local community again in May 2010 for additional comments.

The FEIS, with the NRC's conclusions, is also available via the NRC's electronic 

document database, ADAMS, by entering accession numbers ML11129A167 and 

ML11129A179 in the ADAMS search engine. 

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No. 11-080 May 13, 2011
In addition, the Calvert Library Prince Frederick at 850 Costley Way in Prince Frederick, Md., 

and the Calvert Library Southern Branch at 20 Appeal Lane in Lusby, will have hardbound 

copies of the FEIS available for public inspection.

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