Members and staff of both the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a joint meeting June 7 as part of an ongoing series of discussions on issues of mutual concern to the two agencies that began in 2006.
According to a notice issued by FERC on May 22, the meeting will be held at that agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C., and will be open to the public and webcast. The meeting format will consist of discussions between the two sets of commissioners following presentations by their respective staffs.
No agenda for the event was attached to the notice, but a FERC spokesperson said discussions at the meeting likely will be similar to those that occurred at earlier events, dealing with matters such as "perceived reliability or regulatory issues."
The agencies in April 2006 held their first-ever formal joint meeting, which was triggered by the prospect that up to 25,000 MW of new nuclear power capacity might be built before 2018 as well as confusion over how FERC's standards of conduct rules interacted with the NRC's safety requirements.
Since then, FERC and the NRC generally have held meetings every year or two, although the most recent occurred in October 2015. But the make-up of FERC in particular has changed significantly in the interim; Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur is the only FERC member who attended that meeting and still is a sitting commissioner.
In addition to more general issues surrounding grid reliability, markets and cybersecurity, previous joint meetings have addressed specific topics that were at the forefront of public discussion at the time, such as issues related to geomagnetic disturbances and lessons learned from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster in Japan.
Given the recent focus on maintaining grid reliability in the face of an increasing number of retirements of uneconomic nuclear and coal-fired power plants, the upcoming event accordingly might touch on efforts to compensate certain generators for the resilience attributes they offer the grid. Representatives from the North American Electric Reliability Corp. also will attend and participate in the meeting. (FERC docket AD06-6)
