Full Title: Regulating New Types of Nuclear Reactors
Author(s): Samuel Brinton
Publisher(s): Third Way
Publication Date: July 1, 2015
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
In response to climate change, economics, energy demand, and reliability, engineers in more than 50 companies and organizations in North America are hard at work developing an entirely new generation of nuclear reactors. This technology, known as advanced nuclear, is backed by $1 billion in private investment. Unfortunately, advanced nuclear today faces a significant regulatory roadblock; there is no timely pathway for the federal government to approve the license for these new, very different reactor designs. This is in part because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) does not have the resources it needs to prepare to evaluate and license advanced nuclear.
The NRC is the premier nuclear licensing organization in the world. It has ensured the safety of over 100 reactors across the country for decades. But all these reactors are based on the same light water technology. The NRC knows does not yet have the processes or know how to regulate advanced reactors, which do not use light water. The NRC’s Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research is seeking to address this challenge in order to fulfill the NRC’s research program mission of supplying independent expertise, information, and technical judgments to support timely and realistic regulatory decisions.