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The design might not not be hard but getting it approved is a real pain. "NuScale completed the first NRC review of an advanced reactor application, and overal

The design might not not be hard but getting it approved is a real pain. "NuScale completed the first NRC review of an advanced reactor application, and overall the NuScale DCA review was a success. Staff completed review of the first small modular reactor design in 41 months following docketing of the application. The review was thorough; it involved over a quarter million review hours, about two million pages of documentation made available for review or audit, and about 100 gigabytes of test data." [1] 1/4 of a million review hours! IIRC, NuScale said they spent about $500 million on getting it approved. This was the first modular design ever approved. This is really good news and the fact that none of the climate change bills fund the quick ramping up of testing and building this design means that people don't really want quick action on reducing CO2. [1]https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2105/ML21050A431.pdf https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2105/ML21050A431.pdf

systemvoltage 4y ago
How much of NRC regulations are based on 1980’s scaremongering and FUD, vs. real and material risks of Nuclear reactor designs? I suspect there is some malaise and misallocation of resources where we could benefit from very strict regulations where it really matters. Reminds me of the story of 3D printers where Stratasys had 80 patents expiring between 2005-2010 and as soon as that happened, 3D printers were all the rage. Sometimes, it’s not the fundamental physics, engineering or manufacturing issues; but purely artificial boundaries created by, in this case, IP regulation (patents).
- njarboe 4y ago
  The next paragraph after the one quoted above gives some hope for reducing unneeded parts of the NRC review process: "While successful, the level of effort for reviewing the NuScale DCA may not be repeatable for future reviews. Significant resources were expended on issues with little bearing on the safety of the design, matters well beyond the purview of reasonable assurance of adequate protection. Several issues were left unresolved by Staff, which could have been avoided were the recommendations here in place. During the course of review, NuScale identified several overarching problems with the review process and review criteria that could yield significant efficiencies in the review of future applications, without impacting the effectiveness of NRC’s review." Refering to you 3D printer history, most technologies don't take off till the first round of patents expire. I think one reason tech makes such great strides during war time is that all war related patents are ignored or cross licensed to everyone else.
- mynameisash 4y ago
  > How much of NRC regulations are based on 1980’s scaremongering and FUD, vs. real and material risks of Nuclear reactor designs? Quite a lot, I think. My dad spent his career in the nuclear industry. I don't know exactly how much interaction he had with the NRC, but he did spend several years working in the relicensing group, so I assume it was a lot. The impression I got from my conversations with him was that there was very much an adversarial relationship -- not collaborative. Grain of salt, n=1, etc.
  - credit_guy 4y ago
    I did not work with the nuclear regulators, but I worked plenty with other regulators. Like lots, maybe thousands of hours of interaction. I noticed the tendency among the industry people who interact with regulators to grumble that "they don't even know what questions to ask", etc. I always found that unfair. Of course, as a worker you'd always rather do something else than produce documentation for regulators, but I personally appreciate that the regulators have a job to do, and in my experience they do it well. In many cases I was simply amazed of how thorough they can be. I spent some time looking at the NRC safety approval of the NuScale design [1]. You look at all those documents published there and realize that they are all necessary. You pick one randomly and open it at a random page, and you don't find superfluous things. Now, when you have a review that takes millions of man-hours of effort, you'll find cases of irrelevant inquiries. I suspect however that most of these inquires were irrelevant only in hindsight, not because the NRC supervisors were incompetent. [1] https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/smr/nuscale/ser-open-items.html https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/smr/nuscale/ser-op...
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Unfortunately in the US regulation is technology depended, so the specification might say 'how is your secondary steam loop secured', but of course a molten salt reactor doesn't have steam. You literally can't get approval for anything that is not a PWR. NuScale could kind of slip threw by still being a PWR. NuScale still had some major challenges, one of the reason they had to pay so much is that they wanted 1 control room to control multiple nuclear reactors. That was partly paid for be the government as it will help others as well. If you wanted to do anything other then PWR, you basically have to give them a huge amount of money and a design (couple 100M invested to get there) and then they will take a long time (on your cost) and then potentially develop a regulatory framework and then tell you what your design needs to add. So in practice you are gone be down billions and decades before you get something like a molten salt reactor threw approval. That is why virtually all (at least non DoD) next generation reactors go to Canada to go threw initial deployment. Its hopped that once Canada approves an GenIV reactor other places might be easier to get threw. And thankfully the US is actually looking to Canada and they are considering cross licenses.
deleted 4y ago
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systemvoltage 4y ago

How much of NRC regulations are based on 1980’s scaremongering and FUD, vs. real and material risks of Nuclear reactor designs? I suspect there is some malaise and misallocation of resources where we could benefit from very strict regulations where it really matters. Reminds me of the story of 3D printers where Stratasys had 80 patents expiring between 2005-2010 and as soon as that happened, 3D printers were all the rage. Sometimes, it’s not the fundamental physics, engineering or manufacturing issues; but purely artificial boundaries created by, in this case, IP regulation (patents).

njarboe 4y ago
The next paragraph after the one quoted above gives some hope for reducing unneeded parts of the NRC review process: "While successful, the level of effort for reviewing the NuScale DCA may not be repeatable for future reviews. Significant resources were expended on issues with little bearing on the safety of the design, matters well beyond the purview of reasonable assurance of adequate protection. Several issues were left unresolved by Staff, which could have been avoided were the recommendations here in place. During the course of review, NuScale identified several overarching problems with the review process and review criteria that could yield significant efficiencies in the review of future applications, without impacting the effectiveness of NRC’s review." Refering to you 3D printer history, most technologies don't take off till the first round of patents expire. I think one reason tech makes such great strides during war time is that all war related patents are ignored or cross licensed to everyone else.
mynameisash 4y ago
> How much of NRC regulations are based on 1980’s scaremongering and FUD, vs. real and material risks of Nuclear reactor designs? Quite a lot, I think. My dad spent his career in the nuclear industry. I don't know exactly how much interaction he had with the NRC, but he did spend several years working in the relicensing group, so I assume it was a lot. The impression I got from my conversations with him was that there was very much an adversarial relationship -- not collaborative. Grain of salt, n=1, etc.
- credit_guy 4y ago
  I did not work with the nuclear regulators, but I worked plenty with other regulators. Like lots, maybe thousands of hours of interaction. I noticed the tendency among the industry people who interact with regulators to grumble that "they don't even know what questions to ask", etc. I always found that unfair. Of course, as a worker you'd always rather do something else than produce documentation for regulators, but I personally appreciate that the regulators have a job to do, and in my experience they do it well. In many cases I was simply amazed of how thorough they can be. I spent some time looking at the NRC safety approval of the NuScale design [1]. You look at all those documents published there and realize that they are all necessary. You pick one randomly and open it at a random page, and you don't find superfluous things. Now, when you have a review that takes millions of man-hours of effort, you'll find cases of irrelevant inquiries. I suspect however that most of these inquires were irrelevant only in hindsight, not because the NRC supervisors were incompetent. [1] https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/smr/nuscale/ser-open-items.html https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/smr/nuscale/ser-op...
panick21_ 4y ago
Unfortunately in the US regulation is technology depended, so the specification might say 'how is your secondary steam loop secured', but of course a molten salt reactor doesn't have steam. You literally can't get approval for anything that is not a PWR. NuScale could kind of slip threw by still being a PWR. NuScale still had some major challenges, one of the reason they had to pay so much is that they wanted 1 control room to control multiple nuclear reactors. That was partly paid for be the government as it will help others as well. If you wanted to do anything other then PWR, you basically have to give them a huge amount of money and a design (couple 100M invested to get there) and then they will take a long time (on your cost) and then potentially develop a regulatory framework and then tell you what your design needs to add. So in practice you are gone be down billions and decades before you get something like a molten salt reactor threw approval. That is why virtually all (at least non DoD) next generation reactors go to Canada to go threw initial deployment. Its hopped that once Canada approves an GenIV reactor other places might be easier to get threw. And thankfully the US is actually looking to Canada and they are considering cross licenses.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]