The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the U.S. regulator, announced Friday that it will issue a certificate for a new nuclear reactor design. The design, from NuScale, will be the first small modular reactor design approved by the NRC. Small modular reactors, which are believed to reduce the cost of building nuclear power plants, can be assembled at a factory and shipped to a target site for operation. Its passive safety design structure is thought to automatically shut down in the event of a problem, requiring no manual work. NuScale’s modular reactors use a traditional design, with the entire reactor set up in a large pool of water, with control rods that can be inserted into the reactor by gravity in the event of a power outage, and cooled from an external water source.
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