PORT GIBSON — Upgrades to emergency routes leading away from Grand Gulf Nuclear Station and any hope of increasing tax payments to Port Gibson and Claiborne County will be hashed out between now and acceptance of Entergy Nuclear’s Combined License Application by federal regulators.

About 50 people who gathered Thursday at Port Gibson City Hall sought answers on those subjects from Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials.

Expected in federal hands by March, the license can take more than two years to review. Another public hearing will be called within 60 days of the NRC’s receipt of the application. Early estimates put that hearing in May, said senior project manager Eric Oesterle.

Entergy Nuclear is starting year seven of what would be a 15-year process leading to the nation’s first new nuclear plant in more than a generation. As part of a consortium, the company has received early site approval for Grand Gulf, where the state’s only nuclear plant now operates, and another site in Louisiana. The first phase, which took five years, concluded the sites were environmentally sound and eligible. The second phase is the license application, but undertaking it does not mean a decision to build has been made. Components for a new reactor, however, have been pre-ordered.

At the hearing, inspectors assured routes leading to Natchez and Vicksburg from the remote Claiborne County plant site are adequate as evacuation routes, but some local officials offered the roads as an example of why a bigger share of tax money is needed.

“There is a back door, but it needs work,” Sheriff Frank Davis said. “You certainly need to look at emergency services.”

All such preparations are usually absorbed into earlier reviews, NRC officials said, but deferred questions on that and security concerns are for later.

“Putting an additional unit in would make things more complex,” said NRC emergency preparedness official Ron Schmidt. “We’d give it a comprehensive review. The scoping meeting would be a more appropriate time.”

In 2007, the NRC gave Grand Gulf its highest possible rating following inspections of its incident mitigation, integrity of the barriers between radioactive fuel inside the reactor and the public, emergency planning and limiting radiation exposure to its workers. An assessment is also done on plant security during the annual reviews, but results are not made public.

Tax money generated by the existing plant, completed in 1985 for more than $3 billion, has long been a sore point with Claiborne officials who have argued for a greater share. Initially, the total annual assessment, about $16 million, was, under state law, paid to the county which at the time was operating on an annual budget of about $800,000. Within a few years, however, legislators changed the statute to leave the largest share to Claiborne County and Port Gibson, but to apportion the remainder among cities and counties served by the utility.

Today, the existing plant provides $7.8 million annually in Claiborne County, most of which goes to schools. Former U.S. Rep. Mike Espy, initially hired by Claiborne supervisors as liaison to work for a better deal for the county and now board attorney, said Thursday the allocation may deserve a second look if pending environmental reviews take into account new socioeconomic information. Claiborne, with 12,000 residents, remains one of Mississippi’s most impoverished counties and ranks high in unemployment.

“When in this entire process will it become appropriate for the community to express its feelings on environmental justice?” Espy asked.

Port Gibson Ward 6 Alderman Michael White asked if supplemental information could be added to the environmental review completed as part of its early site permit the NRC issued in 2007.

Environmental project manager Tamsen Dozier said such factors as population, tax base trends and economic forces used as the basis of the study for the site permit were from 2003, but stood by the conclusions as a valid analysis of socioeconomics environmental justice — one of nine factors in the environmental study.

“The agency prides itself on listening to what the issues are,” Dozier said, referencing agency procedures stating any new information may not be significant.

Senior environment project manager Barry Zalcman said tax distributions are “a legislative matter with the state of Mississippi” and cited Hurricane Katrina as an example of a significant item in reconsidering environmental data.

The most recent civilian reactor to be licensed by the NRC was the first phase of Watts Bar Nuclear Generating Station in east Tennessee, completed in 1996. A second unit is set to wrap up in 2013.

Grand Gulf, a boiling water reactor, employs more than 700. Construction of a second reactor would generate more than 1,400 construction jobs and employ about 400 full-time workers once complete.