From your link,

> TerraPower must still complete construction, submit an operating license application, and satisfy all applicable safety and regulatory requirements before loading fuel and beginning operations.

Basically the built plant must pass a rigorous inspection before starting operations. But for that the plant needs to be built!

And built well, which has been a source of big delays in the past.

Many times the reason for this was that the regulations changed during the build necessitating parts to be rebuilt

Sounds like people building it found a way to cheap out that was technically within regulation.

And I’m sure no corners will be cut!

I mean that doesn't sound like very big hurdles. It is an inspection of a completed reactor to make sure it wasn't managed and built like trash. Every factory and business and powerplant is subject to an inspection before it can operate. Even most residentual homes require an inspection before people can live in it.

This is a sodium fast reactor, which is far more advanced than most nuclear reactors, at high temperatures (not that bad: "only 510 C, 950 F). Sodium is infamously hard to deal with, incredibly reactive to water, capable of embrittling metal, and any impurities in the incredibly hot loop can dissolve and transfer and create incredibly corrrosive systems.

Superphenix in France (1973-1998) and Monju in Japan (1994-1995, 2010-2016) have both had significant technical challenges. The Soviets built have some sodium reactors.

I used to be very for a PRISM style reactor like TerraPower is working for, especially with something like Integral Fast Reactor's on-site non-proliferation-safe pyroprocessing. But man, over the years, I just appreciate more and more how hard it is to build and maintain well. I'm both rooting for TerraPower, but also, it low key feels like an "if not when" situation, that this an incredibly energetic unsafe system to be dealing with, and it seems hard to imagine this being a safe long term cost effective solution. I hope the inspections are very very for real, very in depth, very detailed, given the scope of what is being built. It's not even a big reactor! But that much very high temperature sodium going around, right by a big nuclear reactor (smartly TerraPower has separate nuclear and energy "wings), is deeply concerning, and needs incredibly detailed inspections if this is to provide the lasting safe value it is purporting to deliver.

Are the LFTR / MSR salts better or worse than hot sodium on vessel containment?

But with MSRs of a scalable size you could just pipe the fuel to a replacement reactor when the current vessel reached its operational life.

It is what typically all reactors get stuck on for years - or often decades.

I doubt it.

There used to be separate construction and operating permits, and sometimes you got the building permit, built the plant and then never got the operating license.

This has now been streamlined with a combined construction/operating license. If you built what you promised to build, you get to operate it.

Can you give an example of a plant that has been built under this streamlined process and what kind of timeline it had?

The only recent nuclear buildouts that I personally have knowledge of are expansions to existing plants and thus have a lower barrier to get going.

We were talking specifically about the problem of a finished nuclear power plant, built successfully to the specifications in the build permit, not getting an operating license (or taking very long to get it).

With the combined license, that case simply cannot happen, no matter what else happens.

Since it was just released, that’s pretty hard to do eh?

I’m familiar with the reactors built on other previous ‘expedited’ processes that ended up being anything but fast. We’ll see how it goes eh?

If it was just released, then your claims about it are entirely hypothetical and best-case-scenario. Of course we have to "see how it goes" - there's no merit but hopefulness to your stance...

A change in regulations is not a meritless argument, it's useful information

Lol, that every prior process has gone this way (including ‘express’ processes) surely has no value? Uh huh.

We are literally talking about the fact that every prior process has been mired in regulatory slowdown.

Amazing.

It will be quietly canceled in about two years….

That's just federal permission saying they're allowed to even proceed with the process. Nuclear projects cannot begin at all unless they get federal permission. Now that they have permission to do a project related to nuclear energy, I think they will still need to go through all the normal design, planning, permitting processes at federal/state/local levels. Unless they're building on federal land that is exempt from state/local oversight.

That's the permit/approval for the pilot/test, right? There are about a million approvals they need to get through. Are they using the DoE fast tracking method?

Is it not possible that they build the first one and things don't go smoothly and they need to make some adjustments for subsequent builds?

They must investigate how it affects the whales. But won't be told which whales and where