In an international industry, regulators cross the border too

The SMRs that are subject to cooperative regulation (from left): GE Hitachi’s BWRX-300, Westinghouse’s eVinci, and X-Energy’s XE-300.

Along with those two agencies—better known by their acronyms, the NRC and the CNSC—the United Kingdom’s Office of Nuclear Regulation (ONR) has signed up to join in some future efforts.

GE Hitachi, which is trying to license its BWRX-300 small modular reactor, came to both regulators and asked them to cooperate. Each is pledged to greater regulatory efficiency, and agreed.

“It’s kind of a first; we’ve got everybody working together as a group,” said David L. Skeen, director of the Office of International Programs at the NRC. The group includes GE Hitachi; Ontario Power Generation, which is the launch customer for the reactor; and the Tennessee Valley Authority, which hopes to be the second customer.

The top regulators from each agency meet twice a year, along with the chief executives of GE Hitachi, OPG, and TVA. The staffs meet more frequently.

The arrangement does not extend to licensing, but it does cover many of the building blocks, like topical reports and white papers, which cover various issues relating to a new reactor design. Many of these have been reviewed and accepted by both regulators. “And once the reports are done, they’re done,” said Skeen, in an interview at NRC headquarters.

“It really depends on what the vendor wants,” said Skeen. “They’ll submit a paper on a concept, a white paper and not a full design,” he said. “They’ll say, ‘I’m thinking about this approach; what questions would you have?’”

Collaborative responses

Cooperation extends beyond the BWRX-300 that GE Hitachi is marketing. For example, last April Westinghouse submitted its Factory Manufacturing and Assembly report for the eVinci microreactor to both the NRC and the CNSC. Westinghouse wants to ship the reactor from a factory to the point of use with the TRISO fuel already loaded, which is different from any reactor thus far licensed by either regulator. It is also an example of the kind of question that could be resolved the same way on both sides of the border after a joint analysis.

X-energy, which is working on a gas-cooled pebble bed that is heavily supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Project, submitted a white paper, which the two regulators jointly reviewed, on the “regulatory and technical aspects of choosing a construction code” for the reactor. The NRC and CNSC issued a joint report on their findings.

The NRC and CNSC also did a joint report on the qualification of TRISO fuel, the “pebbles” in a pebble bed reactor.

They performed a “collaborative review” of Terrestrial Energy’s white paper Postulated Initiating Events for the IMSR, regarding the company’s integral molten salt reactor design. Their joint report on the vendor’s paper can be used in each regulator’s separate licensing process.

Coming back together

The United States and Canada diverged in the 1950s, at the beginning of the commercial nuclear age, as U.S. utilities chose a pressurized water design that was a scaled-up version of submarine propulsion reactors. Canada, which was without enrichment capability or a metallurgical industry that could fabricate big reactor vessels, developed a reactor that housed the fuel in tubes and used natural uranium and heavy water.

Now Canada is moving for the first time to evaluate reactors that use enriched uranium and are moderated with something besides heavy water. The NRC is moving into new territory too, but it does have expertise to share in light water reactors.

The collaborative arrangement makes a lot of sense right now, proponents say, as vendors try to sell a standard design in both countries, and as a result the regulators face a sudden flood of new reactor types to consider.

In preparation for the BWRX-300, the NRC provided CNSC staff with the training that the NRC gives its own staff on boiling water reactors. It also gave the Canadians the computer codes it uses to analyze BWR fuel.

But Skeen and others at the NRC stress that while there is extensive consultation and cooperation, there may be differences of opinion. “We’re focusing on technical issues. We’re not necessarily making joint licensing decisions,” said Jeremy Bowen, deputy director for the Division of Advanced Reactors and Non-Power Production & Utilization Facilities in the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, in the same interview.

“We can’t make a joint licensing decision because of sovereignty of the countries and different regulatory structures,” Bowen said. And they probably never will, because different laws and procedures apply in each country. The NRC, for example, conducts prelicensing engagement with potential applicants to give them an idea of what will be required in an application. The Canadians conduct a vendor design review before they interact extensively with the applicant. The United States has a different set of laws, including the Atomic Energy Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.

An international industry

While Canada and the United States are full partici­pants, Poland has joined as an observer. Poland has never had reactors, but it is considering the BWRX and the Westinghouse AP1000 for its entry into the world of nuclear power. Among the challenges, however, is establishing a regulatory system.

GE Hitachi, which may be the first to deploy an SMR, seems happy with the cooperation so far. “We appreciate the collaboration between regulators,” said Michelle Catts, senior vice president for the company’s Nuclear Program, in a statement by e-mail. “It is setting the standard for the rest of the industry.” She noted that the company has been active in international cooperation working groups with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the World Nuclear Association’s Cooperation in Reactor Design Evaluation and Licensing working group, and the European Commission.

At the CNSC, spokesperson Braeson Holland said his agency believed in cooperation and learning from other regulators, “which in turn contributes to strengthening global nuclear safety.”

Joint work “has been successful in providing industry and regulators with clarity and predictability,” he said, answering questions by e-mail.

“For the CNSC, regulatory collaboration on BWRX-300 has been particularly successful in adding efficiency and rigor to our technical review of this technology,” he continued.

While the joint work so far had been mostly reviewing topical reports, an early stage in licensing, Holland said, “We anticipate opportunities to extend our approach to joint reviews and leveraging reviews of another regulator to broader applications.”

Regulatory coordination would appear to make sense as the industry goes international. Westinghouse, based near Pittsburgh, Pa., is now owned by a Canadian turnaround firm and a uranium mining company. GE Hitachi’s BWRX reactor, planned for Ontario, will be built in part using components manufactured in Canada by a subsidiary of American company BWX Technologies.

And the collaboration on evaluating the BWRX and other designs makes sense from a regulatory standpoint. But political factors are creating challenges, regardless of what the regulators do. TVA’s role, like so much else in the last few weeks, has been cast into doubt by the change of administration in the White House. Jeffrey J. Lyash, president and CEO since 2019, has been a main backer of the construction of a BWRX-300, but following Trump’s inauguration, Lyash announced that he will retire this year. (Trump had clashed with Lyash during Trump’s first term.)

However, TVA has already invested substantial effort in studying the BWRX-300 for its Clinch River site.

And a trade war with Canada has increased agitation there for using their homegrown product, the CANDU, instead of a U.S. import. But reactors built in Canada would have substantial content produced in that country.

That is another reason joint licensing of a design is unlikely; host country rules for “local content” mean that especially for SMRs that are factory built, key components would be sourced from different places.

Matt Wald is an independent energy writer and consultant. He is a former policy analyst at the Nuclear Energy Institute and for decades was the energy reporter at the New York Times.