[ExI] US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor design

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Fri Jul 29 23:23:36 UTC 2022


NuScale will get the final approval nearly six years after starting the process.
John Timmer - Jul 29, 2022

<https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/07/us-regulators-will-certify-first-small-nuclear-reactor-design/>

Quote:
On Friday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced that it
would be issuing a certification to a new nuclear reactor design,
making it just the seventh that has been approved for use in the US.
But in some ways, it's a first: the design, from a company called
NuScale, is a small modular reactor that can be constructed at a
central facility and then moved to the site where it will be operated.

Small modular reactors have been promoted as avoiding many of the
problems that have made large nuclear plants exceedingly expensive to
build. They're small enough that they can be assembled on a factory
floor and then shipped to the site where they will operate,
eliminating many of the challenges of custom, on-site construction. In
addition, they're structured in a way to allow passive safety, where
no operator actions are necessary to shut the reactor down if problems
occur.
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BillK


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