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What’s reshaping nuclear licensing and compliance today?
Mark Reidmeyer
It is the convergence of urgency, innovation, and modernization that is reshaping nuclear licensing and compliance today.
For decades, nuclear licensing operated in a relatively stable environment built around large light water reactors, predictable review cycles, and well-established regulatory pathways. Today, that model is evolving rapidly. Advanced reactors, AI-enabled tools, digital engineering platforms, grid reliability concerns, and aggressive decarbonization goals are all pushing the industry—and regulators—to move faster and think differently.
E. S. Bettis, Roy C. Robertson
Nuclear Technology | Volume 8 | Number 2 | February 1970 | Pages 190-207
Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT70-A28625
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A conceptual design has been made of a single-fluid 1000 MW(e) Molten-Salt Breeder Reactor (MSBR) power station based on the capabilities of present technology. The reactor vessel is ∼22ft in diameter × 20 ft high and is fabricated of Hastelloy-N with graphite as the moderator and reflector. The fuel is 233U carried in a LiF-BeF2-ThF4 mixture which is molten above 930°F. Thorium is converted to 233U in excess of fissile burnup so that bred material is a plant product. The estimated fuel yield is 3.3% per year. The estimated construction cost of the station is comparable to PWR total construction costs. The power production cost, including fuel-cycle and graphite replacement costs, with private utility financing, is estimated to be 0.5 to 1 mill/kWh less than that for present-day light-water reactors, largely due to the low fuel-cycle cost and high plant thermal efficiency. After engineering development of the fuel purification processes and large-scale components, a practical plant similar to the one described here appears to be feasible.