Why Can't All Nuclear Just Get On The Same Page?

Uranium (Nuclear Minerals) / Nuclear Power - Economics, Design, & Industry

Date posted: 03/12/15

Dr. Conca reports that one problem that has afflicted nuclear power over the decades is the lack of standard designs and standard regulations. With only a few exceptions, all nuclear power plants are different. The industry was supposed to evolve into a few best standard designs, but the reactors lasted so long and worked so well that the pressure to do so was never very great. And then we stopped building them. But now the new generation nuclear industry wants to standardize all new reactors, the regulations and the safety systems. They want to have a relatively few cookie-cutter designs that can be set up anywhere and pose no surprises once they have been built since they have performed so well over the past 30 years and more... This is extremely important. Some countries, like Japan, never developed a strong regulatory authority that was congruent with any international norm, and the consequences were serious. The United States will soon have four new large AP1000 reactors online that embody this strategy. The AP1000 design approved by the United States NRC is a new standard, and all AP1000s built will be of that design. But nowhere else does this standardization concept have more potential than with small modular reactors - SMRs. Small-sized reactors have been around since the 1950s, in submarines, aircraft carriers, icebreakers and at universities. But creating a commercially-viable small reactor for public power has only recently gained traction as our nuclear fleet ages, coal declines, hydro becomes tapped out, and we start needing more baseload electricity. To convince the public that nuclear is an important part of our future, the industry will have to make a strong case for the flexible and strategic applications of these SMRs. SMRs are less than a third the size of traditional nuclear plants, producing less than 300 megawatts - MW, and many are as small as 30 MW. The idea is to have a few standard modules that can be mixed and matched.