US nuclear regulators will stop judging new reactor designs by 1960s standards

US nuclear regulators are changing how they approve new nuclear power plants. Instead of using old rules designed for 1960s reactors, they will now look at the actual risks and performance of each new design.

Every new reactor design had to prove its safety using methods written for 1960s light-water technology. This was an expensive, slow process that effectively blocked anything different. This change means a company with a genuinely different design can now be assessed on its own terms, potentially making it faster and cheaper to build new types of nuclear power.