Opinion ID: 173333
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 12

Heading: The license the NRC issued HRI is inimical to the public's health and safety because it allows HRI to remedy any deficiency in the surety funding at the time the site is decommissioned

Text: Petitioners also argue that the NRC shirked its responsibility to set restoration goals and the surety in an amount adequate to insure the operator can restore the groundwater by simply relying on the fact that the surety can be increased later, during the NRC's annual reviews of the surety amount. As previously explained, however, the NRC did not shirk its responsibility. While the NRC regulations do provide for an annual review of the surety and the possibility that the surety will need to be adjusted, see 10 C.F.R. Part 40, Appendix A, Criterion 9, the NRC made a definitive and reasoned selection of nine pore volumes at the outset of this project as the estimated necessary restoration effort that HRI must fund. The graduated nature of the project the NRC approved, however, represents a reasoned way to address the unknowns at play in this case.