§5847 Nuclear Energy Center Site Survey

Summary

The Commission must do a national survey to find and list places that could be used as nuclear energy centers. It must work with federal, State, and local agencies and ask for views from electric utilities, citizens’ groups, and others. A "nuclear energy center site" means any place, including sites not only on land, that is large enough for utility operations or parts of the nuclear fuel cycle, such as fuel reprocessing, fuel fabrication, retrievable waste storage, and uranium enrichment. The survey must look at regional natural resources (land, air, water), estimate how much future electric power each site could serve, study economic effects, and consider population, distance to electric load centers and fuel-cycle parts, transmission rights-of-way, and other fuel supplies. It must evaluate environmental impacts and whether a center would be better or worse than separate sites. It must consider using federal or public land but not national parks, national forests, national wilderness areas, or national historic monuments. The Commission must publish a report, send it to Congress and the Council on Environmental Quality within one year from October 11, 1974, make it public, update it as needed, give conclusions and recommendations (including laws), and may set policies to encourage locating reactors and fuel-cycle facilities at such centers.