SMR manufacturers mount legal challenge

Posted: 21st April 2025

The GOP governors and their respective offices of state attorneys general (in one case the top GOP state legislators) in Texas, Utah, Florida, Louisiana, and Arizona have joined together with a number of fledgling nuclear start-up companies still in the design development phase for new, unproven small modular reactors (SMR) in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas Tyler Division against the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The lawsuit argues that reactor licensing requirements for microreactors and SMRs—with power outputs ranging from 1 to 300 megawatts electric (MWe)—do not need to be as stringent on safety requirements as the nation’s predecessor of behemoth commercial nuclear power plants in operation today. The plaintiffs claim, that because SMRs are significantly smaller they are inherently safer such that states regulatory authorities in collaboration with the nuclear industry would be sufficient to take control of licensing of SMR development from the NRC. This would include reactor independent design safety certification and construction. The plaintiffs have further claimed that offsite radiological emergency planning and environmental protection from a nuclear accident would no longer be necessary much farther than the reactor site exclusion fence line and can be safely operated within denser population zones. This premise ignores the fact that the intent of the modular design allows for multiple units to be co-located, closely congregated and even operated from a single control room on a power scale potentially larger than even current conventional commercially light water nuclear reactor stations generating thousands of megawatts. Numerous common mode failures from singular, simultaneous and cascading events including internal design and material failures, external events including severe floods, earthquakes, and deliberate acts of malice cannot be totally ruled out.

Beyond Nuclear 17th April 2025

https://beyondnuclear.org/gop-states-sue-nrc-to-deregulate-smr-licensing/ ;