Small, advanced nuclear reactors can finally get licensed on their own terms

US nuclear regulators are proposing new rules to license small, advanced nuclear reactors. This means companies building these new designs will not have to fit them into rules made for large, conventional reactors.

For decades, any new nuclear reactor design had to prove its safety using rules written for the large, light-water reactors built in the 1960s. This was an expensive and slow process that effectively blocked anything truly different. These proposed rules mean companies with genuinely new designs can now be assessed on their own terms, potentially speeding up deployment.