As the energy source of the future, safe, reliable and affordable nuclear power hardly needs an introduction. Power-starved Germans have re-embraced it; the French have been powered by it for nearly 60 years.
Altogether, there are 30 countries where you’ll find nearly 450 nuclear reactors currently operating – as well as the Germans and French – Americans, Canadians, Japanese and Chinese are well aware of the benefits of nuclear power. Another 15 countries are currently building 60 reactors among them.
Nuclear power output accounts for over 11% of global electricity production. But all that power is generated at scale. Whereas, what promises to change the way that nuclear energy is produced and distributed is much smaller, and the Americans are leading the charge.
Jeremey Beaman reports on how NuScale Power has won not only the confidence of US regulators, but a contract to build America’s first 50MW, SMR power plant at DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory.
First Small Modular Reactor Gets Certification From Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Washington Examiner
Jeremy Beaman
20 January 2023
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced the first-ever certification Friday of a small modular reactor design, a big step in the process of developing a new generation of new and more flexible nuclear reactors.
The NRC approved the reactor design from NuScale Power, making it the first SMR design to be certified by the regulator and only the seventh reactor design cleared for use in the United States.
“SMRs are no longer an abstract concept,” said Kathryn Huff, assistant secretary for nuclear energy at the Department of Energy. “They are real, and they are ready for deployment thanks to the hard work of NuScale, the university community, our national labs, industry partners, and the NRC.”
NuScale is one among many nuclear energy companies working to re-imagine the legacy nuclear reactor technologies developed in the 20th century by scaling them down, with one leading motivation being to make the construction of nuclear power plants more cost-effective.
The company, which was awarded a contract to build an SMR power plant on-site at DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory, celebrated certification of the design Friday of its advanced light-water reactor. The reactor uses power modules that each can generate 50 megawatts of electricity.
By comparison, the two new reactors at Plant Vogtle in Georgia are each rated at 1,250 megawatts.
The Biden administration has prioritized the advancement of new nuclear technologies, as well as the preservation of existing and operating power plants.
The Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats’ new green energy and healthcare spending law, offers a mix of tax incentives to nuclear power generators and funding to produce the uranium necessary to fuel advanced reactors.
Some in the nuclear sector, as well as members of Congress in both parties, have called for the NRC to be reformed due to the delays in certifying new reactor designs and licensing new construction.
The agency began operations in 1975 with a single mandate to ensure public safety. Some reform proponents say Congress needs to give it another mandate to enable commerce.
Before Friday, the commission’s last new reactor design to be certified was in September 2019.
The NRC has not licensed a new nuclear installation from start to finish in its history. When Georgia’s Plant Vogtle units 3 and 4 come online, they will be the first.
Washington Examiner
STOP THESE THINGS 
I really hate to toss a wet blanket here, because I am fully supportive of both NuScale and SMRs in general. We will not get to net zero without a ton of new nuclear and I have dedicated my career to helping make that happen. However, this is a terrible example of progress, and it chafes me to see it celebrated. We must do way better. NuScale is arguably the safest LWR design to date, yet 6+ years after they submitted an application to the NRC (I approved the last section before submittal on New Year’s Eve end of 2016), it is finally approved in the Federal Register, and you still could not start construction today.
Interesting read on NRC ADAMS (https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html) is ML21050A431, NuScale report on lessons learned from the certification process. Key quotes that stuck with me: “Staff completed review of the first small modular reactor design in 41 months following docketing of the application. The review was thorough; it involved over a quarter million review hours, about two million pages of documentation made available for review or audit, and about 100 gigabytes of test data. The ACRS conducted some 40 meetings totaling approximately 440 hours.” And “In the case of the NuScale DCA, application development and review costs exceeded half a billion dollars.”
On top of this, NuScale submitted at the beginning of Jan 2023 another application (Standard Design Approval or SDA) to increase the design power level 150% from 50 to 77 MWe – the higher power now planned for UAMPS Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP) (https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/smr/licensing-activities/pre-application-activities/nuscale-720-sda.html). Have not heard when that change will be approved, but the 50MWe model approved in the Federal Register has no plans to be built as far as I know.
In 2020, over 42,000 people were killed in motor vehicle accidents in the US. Somehow, despite that carnage, we managed to license a whole bunch of new designs for sale in 2021.
Reblogged this on whatyareckon.
Being the “first small modular reactor” depends upon your definition of “small.”
The PRISM design — “Power Reactor Innovative Small Modular” by GE/Hitachi was certified long ago. It’s based upon EBR-II, which operated flawlessly at Idaho National Laboratory until the Cliton administration terminated the research program, destroyed the reactor, and filled the building with concrete in 1994.
PRISM is available in three capacities: 150, 300, and 360 MWe. The EBR-II design was proven to be inherently walk-away safe in a demonstration for an invited international audience in 1986. I prefer to call PRISM “Power Reactor Inherently Safe Modular.”
PRISM a fast-neutron breeder. So if it’s coupled with a fuel processing facility, as was EBR-II, it uses uranium 160 times more efficiently. The United States has enough uranium, above ground, mined, milled, and refined, to power an all-electric all-nuclear American energy economy with an appetite for 1,700 GWe for 525 years.
There have been over 700 SMRs at sea since the 1950’s with over 12,000 reactor-years of experience worldwide. The USS Nautilus sub went to sea in 1955.
The USS Enterprise was in service from 1960-2012 running on 5 SMRs. The US Army brought 8 reactors critical between Apr 1957 and Jan 1967 (which we would call microreactors today – <10 MWe). The Army MH-1A Sturgis floating reactor powered the Panama Canal 1968-1975 with 10 MWe.
Correction: The Enterprise had 8 SMRs.