Once again, we are looking to hear from the public about proposed changes to our fee rule.
The
agency is required by law to recover approximately 90 percent of our
budget through fees to licensees and applicants. To accomplish this,
each year we publish a rule that establishes the fees in a way that
recoups the cost of “doing business” for the NRC.
There
are two types of fees: licensee-specific and annual fees. Both types of
fees incorporate the cost of the program oversight and agency overhead.
Licensee-specific fees are based on hourly rates to recover the costs
of specific services, such as reviewing applications and performing
inspections. Annual fees recover all other costs.
For
FY 2012, the NRC received about $1 billion. Based on this amount, the
NRC must recover about $909.5 million directly from those we regulate by
Sept. 30. In our regulations, approximately 40 percent of the fees will
be billed for licensee-specific services and the remaining 60 percent
will be billed as annual fees.
The
proposed fee rule includes several changes. First, we are proposing to
change the current hourly rate slightly from $273 to $274. Second, we
would revise the flat license application fees (found in our federal
guidelines 10 CFR Parts
170.21 and
170.31) to reflect the new hourly rate. Finally,we would revise annual fees, as appropriate, for all licensees.
We
also propose that the annual fees would increase for some licenses,
such as for most material users, fuel facilities and transportation, and
would decrease for operating nuclear reactors, research and test
reactors, spent fuel storage facilities and most uranium recovery
licenses.
We
continue efforts to keep our fees as low as possible by ensuring our
programs are conducted efficiently and effectively, and we request from
Congress only the resources necessary to perform our mission of
protecting people and the environment
Renu Suri
Fee Policy Analyst
Office of the Chief Financial Officer
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