{"id":144153,"date":"2022-08-16T00:24:43","date_gmt":"2022-08-16T05:24:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/08\/us-regulators-to-certify-first-small-modular-nuclear-reactor-design"},"modified":"2022-08-16T00:24:43","modified_gmt":"2022-08-16T05:24:43","slug":"us-regulators-to-certify-first-small-modular-nuclear-reactor-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/08\/us-regulators-to-certify-first-small-modular-nuclear-reactor-design","title":{"rendered":"US Regulators to Certify First Small Modular Nuclear Reactor Design"},"content":{"rendered":"

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View insights.<\/p>\n

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Since 2016, engineering firm NuScale has been working toward getting approval for a first-of-its-kind nuclear reactor, and late last week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) gave it the green light. The company\u2019s pint-sized nuclear reactor has numerous safety benefits over larger reactors, and the small size makes it possible to build them at a centralized facility before shipping them to their final destination.<\/p>\n

Nuclear power seems to flip between savior and boogeyman every few years. As climate change escalates due to the use of fossil fuels, nuclear is seen as a way to reduce carbon emissions while maintaining high electricity generation. However, all it takes is one accident like Fukushima<\/a> or a reminder that Chernobyl is still incredibly dangerous<\/a> decades later to make people second-guess the construction of new fission generators.<\/p>\n

NuScale, which has been anticipating approval of this design since the last technology review in 2020, says its small modular reactor (SMR) addresses these concerns<\/a>. It\u2019s based on a \u201cMulti-Application Small Light Water Reactor\u201d developed at Oregon State University in the early 2000s. It has a compact uranium nuclear core along with helical coil steam generators inside the same steel reactor vessel. So, it generates power through the same mechanism as a traditional reactor (no fancy uranium or thorium salts here), but each SMR only produces about 50 MWe (megawatts electrical) compared with 1,000 or more in existing reactor designs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

View insights. Since 2016, engineering firm NuScale has been working toward getting approval for a first-of-its-kind nuclear reactor, and late last week, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) gave it the green light. The company\u2019s pint-sized nuclear reactor has numerous safety benefits over larger reactors, and the small size makes it possible to build them at [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":413,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[493,38,873,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climatology","category-engineering","category-nuclear-energy","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/413"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}