America's Nuclear ReluctanceThe first innovative nuclear reactors designed by American companies may well begin operation in Eastern Europe before they get built in Idaho.
RONALD BAILEY
FROM THE JUNE 2022 ISSUE of Reason Magazine
On February 14, 2022, Oregon's NuScale Power signed an agreement with the Polish mining and processing firm KGHM to deploy NuScale's innovative small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) in Poland by 2029. At the U.N.'s Glasgow Climate Change Conference in November, NuScale contracted with a Romanian energy company to deploy its SMR technology in that country by 2028. NuScale has signed similar memoranda of understanding with electric power companies in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.
This kind of advanced energy technology will likely be powering homes and businesses in Europe before the first reactor is completed in the United States. That's because the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is in no hurry to help.
NuScale's SMR technology did receive an NRC staff "standard design approval" in September 2020. But that happened largely because NuScale's -technology employs a smaller-scale version of the light-water reactors that the NRC -bureaucracy has been (over-)regulating for decades.
Even with that step out of the way, NuScale has been working with the NRC for years and remains stymied by bureaucratic obstacles. The company began its pre-application meetings with the NRC in 2008 and formally submitted its design certification application in 2016. NuScale is now waiting for the NRC commissioners to issue a "standard design certification," which the company hopes to receive later this year.
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When it comes to truly novel nuclear technology, the NRC is even stodgier. In January, it rejected California-based Oklo Power's application to build and operate the company's Aurora compact fast -reactor in Idaho. Oklo Power ran into the NRC roadblock largely because its sodium-cooled fast reactor technology has never previously been evaluated and approved by the agency's bureaucrats. Its microreactor would generate just 1.5 megawatts of electricity, fueled essentially by nuclear waste.
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Source:
https://reason.com/2022/05/23/americas-nuclear-reluctance/
