US NRC orders plan for reviewing safety of small modular reactors

NRC staff is told to finish small-reactor review plan in 6 months
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission Wednesday ordered staff to complete within six months a plan for reviewing the safety of small modular reactors that will allow the agency to focus on areas of highest risk. In their order, commissioners directed staff to study "how to more fully integrate the use of risk insights into pre-application activities" in anticipation of SMR design certifications and licensing applications. With risk insights, companies and regulators can look for "areas where the largest safety risk resides" and channel resources toward areas of greatest risks, rather than imposing a blanket set of safety requirements on all designs, NRC spokesman Eliot Brenner said. "There might be benefit in terms of streamlining or speeding up the process of considering applications," he said. SMRs are defined as reactors with capacity under 300 MW by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Reactor vendors and the US Department of Energy are working on several SMR designs and the Pentagon is studying the feasibility of using SMRs to power military facilities. The NRC expects to receive the first SMR design certification application in 2012. 

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