Small nuclear reactors can now be licensed on their own terms, not 1960s rules

US nuclear regulators are proposing new rules for licensing small, advanced nuclear reactors. This means these new designs will no longer be judged by safety standards written for much larger, older reactor types.

For decades, every new reactor design had to prove its safety using methods written for the large light-water reactors of the 1960s. This was an expensive, slow process that effectively blocked anything truly different. This change means a company with a genuinely different design can now be assessed on its own terms, potentially speeding up deployment for a new class of nuclear power. The US has not built a new nuclear reactor since 2016.