Advanced reactors take center stage in Popular Mechanics

Advantages of tiny reactors: The article provides a high-level review of the advantages of the next generation of nuclear reactors. The three advantages listed in the article are the amount of space needed for an SMR compared to a traditional nuclear power plant, the fully passive safety systems, and the scalability and flexibility built into the new reactor designs.

Reactor designs: Readers are introduced to a few of the startup companies in the nuclear community, the first and most recognizable being NuScale. The company is described as “the most conservative of the small-nuclear programs.” One of the advantages highlighted is the ability of NuScale’s reactor to operate at 20 percent during the day when renewables are most productive and ramp up to 100 percent production at night, “while the rest of the grid is on solar downtime.”

Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC) is also covered in the story. USNC’s design, the article notes, is taking a different approach and is focusing on “low energy density and low decay heat generation after shutdown, which means less risk of a meltdown.” The USNC reactor concept uses fully ceramic micro-encapsulated fuel, which, according to USNC’s founder Lorenzo Venneri, can’t meltdown.

A review of Oklo’s micro reactor is also provided. Jacob DeWitte, Oklo’s cofounder and chief executive officer, introduces the reader to the company’s strategy. “The industry typically takes this incremental approach to things,” DeWitte says, “but in our mind we have to do things more tranformatively, frankly for the planet’s sake.” The game-changing approach from Oklo is the use of high-assay, low-enriched uranium fuel that will provide greater efficiency and is moderated using sodium instead of water. Caroline Cochran, Oklo’s cofounder and chief operating officer, sums up the reactor design by saying, “We’re still fission, but we use different fuel, different cooling, different technology.”