January 25, 2023--Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The U.S. Nuclear Power Renaissance, Part 2, took a big step forward last week after federal nuclear regulators issued their final approval of the design for a small modular reactor (SMR) developed by NuScale Power Corporation (NYSE:SMR) (Portland, Oregon).

One can only hope that the sequel is better than the original, in which at least 15 next-generation "passive" reactor projects, valued at more than $252 billion, were cancelled or placed on hold over the last decade or so. Only one of those projects, the two units nearing completion at the Alvin W. Vogtle Nuclear Power Station in Waynesboro, Georgia, persevered, though at a high cost and through lengthy delays.

But there was fresh optimism in the Power Industry following the January 19 decision by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) (Rockville, Maryland) to provide final certification of NuScale's 50-megawatt (MW) reactor design, completing a process started about two decades ago at Oregon State University (Corvallis, Oregon). The rule, published in the Federal Register, takes effect February 21, 2023.