[wolfpat]

Don’t place too much stock in pebble bed reactors yet.

There’ll be more Westinghouse AP1000s and General Electric ABWRs built sooner because we already know how to build and run them.

[neb52]

That’s true. Two of the current proposals here in Texas is to expand two of the current Nuclear Plants. It is cheaper since you don’t have to build the other support/admin facilities that already exist. I would assume the technology of those reactors would be the same or similar as the other two existing.

[sefarkas]

The NRC does not have the staff or the regulations needed by the staff to evaluate a proposal to site/build a pebble-bed style reactor. It is the same reason that Dominion switched to the GE design for their new reactor once it became clear that the first try with the Canadian design could not be licensed by the NRC in a reasonable time. The AREVA design, e.g., for Calvert Cliffs, is an evolution of the Westinghouse design and is thus more straightforward for the NRC staff to evaluate.