Despite recent setbacks, a new reactor proposed for Maryland's Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant took at step forward Friday. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Army Corps of Engineers ruled that unit 3 at the site would have no environmental impacts that would preclude its being licensed.The FEIS is a positive step for the combined license at the plant 40 miles south of Annapolis, Md., in Lusby, Md. The project calls for a 1,500-megawatt Areva US-EPR reactor next to Calvert Cliffs' two existing pressurized water reactors licensed in the mid-1970s that generate roughly 860 megawatts each.NRC agreed to proceed with licensing for the unit despite the agency's earlier ruling that its current ownership by a joint venture called Unistar is illegal under U.S. law. French nuclear firm EDF would own most of the reactor after American partner Constellation Energy backed out of the project.Next steps in the reactors' licensing include resolution of the ownership issue, a challenge to the environmental review before NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board and a license review by the NRC's independent Committee on Reactor Safeguards.