Earlier this year, NuScale Energy took a crucial step forward in its prolonged effort to build 12 scaled-down nuclear reactors on an empty parcel at the Idaho National Laboratory, a sprawling research campus on the outskirts of Idaho Falls (see “Shrinking Nuclear”). The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission agreed to begin the formal process of reviewing the company's designs for the 600-megawatt plant, which could power a city the size of Boise twice over.
That gives NuScale, based in Portland, Oregon, the inside track on building the country's first commercial reactors of this type.
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