The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has new doubts about the NuScale Power’s SMR design. The NRC last Friday (Mar. 17) announced that it will begin examining problems it has identified with the design of the NuScale 77-MW small modular reactor. Earlier, the NRC gave “preliminary” approval to the pressurized water reactor, leading up to the NRC “standard design approval (SDA)” required before the project can begin construction.
In last week’s letter to NuScale, the NRC said that “there are now many areas where the level of detail in the SDA application is not sufficient to provide the bases for NuScale’s stated conclusions.” The NRC regulatory staff added, “There appear to be some areas where it is not yet clear if sufficient experimental test data is available to support the method or analysis provided in the SDA application.”
The NRC action could put significant delays in NuScale’s plans for its project in Idaho. The NRC letter says, “The staff will engage with NuScale during the review to understand the details of testing and analyses that support the passive and innovative safety features of this design and whether there is reasonable assurance that they will perform their intended safety functions. If during the course of its review, the staff finds that additional testing or analysis is needed for these features, it will then be critical that the timelines and resources for those tests be promptly identified so that the staff can re-assess any potential impact to the schedule for its review of the SDA application.”
In a related matter, in a press release Oregon-based NuScale said it has placed an order with South Korea’s Doosan for “upper reactor pressure vessels” for its Utah Associated Municipal Power System project. The six 77-MW reactor project on Department of Energy land near Idaho Falls is scheduled to go into service in 2029.
World Nuclear News reported that NuScale and Doosan in 2019 signed a collaborative agreement for Doosan to provide the NuScale Power Modules and other equipment. At the time, Doosan and other Korean investors made a $104 million investment in NuScale Power.
GE Hitachi’s 300-MW BWRX-300 small modular reactor design has completed two phases of pre-licensing review at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. World Nuclear News reports that the Canadian regulators found no fundamental barriers to licensing the GEH boiling water reactor. The CNSC approved the first two phases of the three-phase “vendor design review,” an optional element in the formal review leading up to a full licensing process.
The vendor review aims to make sure the applicant understands the Canadian regulatory process in all it intricacies. Phase 3 gives the vendor an opportunity to follow up on the regulator’s earlier findings. CNSC said, “CNSC staff concluded from this information that GEH understands and has correctly interpreted the intent of regulatory requirements for the design of nuclear power plants in Canada. CNSC staff did not identify any fundamental barriers to licensing. However, the review did reveal some technical areas that need further development in order for GEH to better demonstrate adherence to CNSC requirements.”
According to the CNSC, the 300-MW BWRX-300 “leverages the design and licensing basis of GEH’s ESBWR boiling water reactor, which has been certified by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and is the tenth evolution of GE’s first boiling water reactor design.”
The UK is relaunching an SMR competition. Reuters reports that Jeremy Hunt, Britain’s finance minister, says he will have vendors of small nuclear reactors, such as an SMR Rolls-Royce is proposing, compete for approval and possible government financial support. In his budget statement last week (Mar. 15), Hunt said, “I am launching the first competition for Small Modular Reactors. It will be completed by the end of this year and if demonstrated to be viable we will co-fund this exciting new technology.”
Hunt also said he would consult with the government of Prime Ministry Rishi Sunak about declaring nuclear “environmentally sustainable” to attract more private investment, which is leery of large nuclear projects. The Rolls-Royce 470-MW SMR pushes the standard definition of “small,” which is generally considered to be 300 MW or smaller.
Reuters noted that Hunt’s claim of a “first competition” is in error. Britain in 2015 announced an SMR competition, with the first phase in 2016 attracting interest from 33 “eligible parties. It closed in 2017 without moving beyond the initial, information gathering first stage.”
Britain has an aging fleet of nuclear reactors, which generate about 13% of the nation’s electricity. All but one of the plants in the current fleet are due to close by 2030. The government in 2022 supplied ₤210 million to Rolls-Royce’s ₤500 million plan to build its reactor designs in Britain.
The Nuclear Energy Agency, a subsidiary of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, has published an online “Small Nuclear Reactor Dashboard.” The dashboard tracks detailed information on 21 identified SMRs, including six “key areas:” Licensing; Siting; Financing; Supply chain; Engagement; Fuel. NEA says: “In each area, the NEA defines objective criteria that reflect substantial progress towards [first of a kind] deployment and commercialisation. The progress criteria are applied using verifiable public sources. It is difficult to compare SMR technologies advancing in different contexts and jurisdictions, characterised by unique regulatory structures and approaches, siting requirements, financial models and policy environments, among other differences. Objective criteria have been defined to reflect substantial progress irrespective of differences across contexts and jurisdictions. The public information used to populate The NEA SMR Dashboard captures a “snapshot” in time based on the latest public information at the time of drafting.”
–Kennedy Maize
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