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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 114 / Wednesday, June 16, 2021 / Rules and Regulations
32161

TABLE XIXFY 2021 PROPOSED FEE RULE COMMENTER SUBMISSIONSContinued Commenter
Affiliation
ADAMS
accession No.

Matthew Ostdiek
Gary Peters
Jennifer Uhle
Cheryl Gayheart
Bradley Fewell
Anonymous

Rendezvous Engineering, P.C. RE
Framatome
Nuclear Energy Institute NEI
Southern Nuclear Operating Company SNC
Exelon Generation Company Exelon
N/A

ML21077A246
ML21082A394
ML21084A747
ML21084A747
ML21085A680
ML21090A120

Information about obtaining the complete text of the comment submissions is available in Section XIV, Availability of Documents, of this document.
IV. Public Comments and NRC
Responses The NRC has carefully considered the public comments received on the proposed rule. The comments have been organized by topic. Comments from a single commenter have been quoted to ensure accuracy; brackets within those comments are used to show changes that have been made to the quoted comments. The NRC responses are preceded by a short summary of the issues raised by the commenters.

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A. Overhead Costs Comment: The NRC fees are wildly excessive relative to private industry.
The NRC fee is more than engineering firm senior executives would charge a client. There is simply no question that the NRC bureaucracy is vast and requires an extremely high overhead cost be attached to the direct cost associated with NRC staff carrying out review activities. The NRC fee creates a yearly charge that is more than the salary of the U.S. president. As long as significantly excessive fees are charged, there appears to be no incentive for the NRC to reduce the overhead bloat, the proposed fee should be reduced by at least 5% every year until the fee is more similar to that of private industry doing similar work. M. Keller Response: The NRC is a Federal agency tasked with protecting the health and safety of the public and the common defense and security, and there is no equivalent role found in private industry. Unlike private industry, all fees that the NRC assesses to applicants and licensees must conform to statutory requirements under the IOAA and NEIMA. In other words, the fees that the NRC charges are based in part on requirements that would not be reflected in the fees charged by private engineering firms.
The IOAA prescribes the framework for charging fees for government
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services. Under the IOAA, fees must be fair and based on the costs to the Government and value of the service to the recipient. Additionally, under NEIMA, the NRC is required to recover through fees, to the maximum extent practicable, approximately 100 percent of its annual budget authority, less the budget authority for excluded activities.
Under NEIMA the NRC must also use its IOAA authority first to collect 10 CFR
part 170 service fees for NRC work that provides specific benefits to identifiable recipients, such as licensing activities, inspections, and special projects.
To comply with these laws, the NRC
establishes a professional hourly rate for its work. Consistent with the IOAA, the professional hourly rate is derived by adding budgeted resources for: 1
Mission-direct program salaries and benefits; 2 mission-indirect program support; and 3 agency support, which includes corporate support and the Inspector General. The NRC then subtracts certain offsetting receipts and divides this total by the mission-direct FTE converted to hours the missiondirect FTE converted to hours is the product of the mission-direct FTE
multiplied by the estimated annual mission-direct FTE productive hours.
The only budgeted resources excluded from the professional hourly rate are those for contract activities related to mission-direct contract resources, which are generally billed to licensees separately. Because the NRCs fee recovery under the IOAA 10 CFR part 170 will not equal 100 percent of the agencys total budget authority for the fiscal year less the budget authority for excluded activities, the NRC also assesses annual fees under 10 CFR part 171 to recover the remaining amount necessary to comply with NEIMA.
No change was made to the final rule in response to this comment.
B. Operating Power Reactors Decline in the Budget and 10 CFR Part 170
Estimated Billings Comment: Over the past five years, Part 170 service fee collections have decreased by over 20%. This reduction is even more dramatic for the operating
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plant fee class from which over 85% of service fees are collected, where Part 170 service fee collections have decreased by 45%. While there has been a reduction in the NRC operating plant budget during this time, the reduction has not kept pace with the reduction in operating plant service fee collections.
As a result, a greater percentage of the budget is required to be recovered through annual fees. The percentage of the operating plant budget that is derived from annual fees currently at 73% continues to increase; up from 62% in FY 2016. As noted in the fee rule notices and associated work papers, the reductions in service fee collections in recent years have been attributable, in part, to plant closures. These closures were announced well in advance and should have enabled adjustments to be made to properly align the NRC budget to reflect smaller projected workloads.
With a number of announced nuclear plant closures in FY 2022 and subsequent years, the downward trend in Part 170 service fee collections will continue. It is not realistic to expect a decreasing number of operating plants to support a budget that, on a per plant basis, is appreciably increasing. The anticipated reduction in Part 170 service fee collections places a strong obligation on the NRC to ensure that staffing levels and budgets are properly aligned to reflect smaller projected workloads. The NRC should take all necessary steps to continue and expedite its efficiency efforts. Given the maturity of the U.S.
nuclear fleet, in combination with its high level of operational performance and a demonstrated level of safety, timely reductions in unnecessary regulatory burden are appropriate. We are encouraged by efforts underway to transform NRC into a modern riskinformed regulator. It is imperative that these efforts continue. NEI
Response: The relationship between 10 CFR part 170 service fees relative to 10 CFR part 171 annual fees is workload-driven. The activities covered by 10 CFR part 171 annual fees are necessary for the NRC to accomplish its safety and security mission as described and justified in the CBJ. The amount of
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