In a major advancement of nuclear technology, NuScale asked the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Dec. 31st to approve the company’s SMR commercial power plant design. This is the first-ever SMR to be submitted to the NRC and marks a significant milestone for both NuScale and the power generation industry.
The application consisted of 12,000 pages of technical information. The initial review period will be two months, and the full review from the NRC is expected to take 40 months. NuScale expects the first SMR to be built in America and become operational in the early 2020s.
NuScale utilizes NX and Teamcenter for managing and tracking their data. After supplying initial seats of NX CAD, Applied CAx helped upgrade their Teamcenter instances and built new data workflows. NuScale’s previous CAD software couldn’t handle assemblies and crashed too frequently, and those were the key drivers to use NX.
“We reached this tremendous milestone through the efforts of more than 800 people over eight years,” said NuScale COO and CNO Dale Atkinson. “We have documented, in extensive detail, the design conceived by Dr. Jose Reyes more than a decade ago. We are confident that we have submitted a comprehensive and quality application, and we look forward to working with the NRC during its review.”
NuScale’s vision is for a new kind of nuclear plant: safer, smaller, scalable version of pressurized water reactor technology – a technology initially developed and tested at Oregon State University. NuScale’s design offers the benefits of carbon-free nuclear power and reduces the financial commitments associated with giga-watt size nuclear facilities. NuScale’s technology is also ideally suited to supply energy for district heating, desalination, and process heat applications.
NuScale is headquartered in Portland, Oregon and has offices in Corvallis, OR; Rockville, MD; Charlotte, NC; Richland, WA; and London, UK.