Conceptually, I think this is a cool idea, allowing for both flexible power construction and a very safe reactor design.
Previously, the government planned the power the nation would need, found the best scientists to design a nuclear reactor and paid the bill.
Instead of seeking NRC approval for each new reactor design, a costly and uncertain procedure, utilities will have the option of choosing from pre-approved designs.
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The last new reactor design to be agreed was in December last year for energy firms EDF and Areva, for sites at Hinkley Point, Somerset, and Sizewell at Suffolk.
It has its hands in every part of the nuclear industry, from uranium mining to enrichment to fuel fabrication to reactor design and construction to maintenance and refueling to reprocessing and recycling.
That's a lot of risk capital for any venture-backed start-up, especially considering that not one new commercial nuclear reactor design has been approved and built in the United States for 30 years.
One huge difference between the Fukushima and Chernobyl circumstances relates to basic reactor facility design features.
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China is set to start work on a novel design for a nuclear reactor with the help of a firm founded by Bill Gates.
Finland and France, which produces more of its electricity in nuclear plants than any other big country, each have under construction a plant of the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) design developed by AREVA, a French industrial group.
It had no similar design flaws, no carbon in the reactor to spew contaminations.
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It has its eye on a joint project to design a gas-turbine modular helium reactor with the United States, Japan and France.
The Kulinarski plant is a newer design than that of Chernobyl, where a reactor exploded in 1986.
But on March 15 even that license renewal authorization was postponed indefinitely since it is a near design twin of the Japanese Fukushima Daiichi 1 reactor.
Based in Washington state, Terrapower is working on a design for what is known as a travelling wave reactor.
They challenged the reactor on several grounds, including the novel design of its shield building.
Each of the reactors will be a small, modular, 125MW advanced light water reactor, which at the present time includes a design for the nuclear core and steam generator to be located at the same site, with passive safety designs.
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