3 May (NucNet): Foreign ownership could keep Nuclear Innovation North America (NINA) from pursuing a licence to build two 1,350-megawatt advanced boiling water reactors at the existing South Texas nuclear power plant site, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has determined.
The NRC said NINA and its wholly owned subsidiaries “continue to be under foreign ownership, control or domination” and do not meet the requirements of the relevant section of the Atomic Energy Act. NINA is a partnership between US energy company NRG and Toshiba Corporation.
US federal law restricts the amount of ownership foreign companies can hold in US nuclear plants – a requirement that has also hampered efforts by French-owned EDF to invest in new reactors at Maryland’s Calvert Cliffs plant.
NINA plans to appeal the ruling to the NRC’s Atomic Safety Licensing Board, arguing that NRG controls 90 percent of the holding company, a spokesman said.
In Texas, the project’s ownership structure changed after the accident at Fukushima-Daiichi put paid to a planned investment of 155 million US dollars (118 million euros) from Tokyo Electric Power Company.
Toshiba North America Engineering is planning to assume exclusive, principal funding authority for the project, but it is a wholly owned subsidiary of Toshiba America Incorporated, a Japanese company.
“Foreign investment in US nuclear projects is not per se prohibited, but Toshiba is paying all the bills for the South Texas project. This makes it difficult to accept that Toshiba doesn’t control the project,” said attorney Robert Eye, who is working on the case. Mr Eye was quoted in a statement released by the opposition organisation Nuke Free Texas (NFT).
Foreign ownership, control or domination policy is spelled out in the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, NFT said. In Section 103d it says that no licence may be issued to an alien or any corporation or other entity if the NRC knows or has reason to believe it is owned, controlled, or dominated by an alien, a foreign corporation, or a foreign government.
According to NRC guidance, an entity is under foreign ownership, control, or domination “whenever a foreign interest has the ‘power,’ direct or indirect, whether or not exercised, to direct or decide matters affecting the management or operations of the applicant.”
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