Research and Development
The NRC staff asks prospective applicants to identify research and development activities for the design.
Before contacting the NRC, prospective applicants should have sufficient design knowledge (or plans to develop that information) to understand the time needed to qualify safety features and important plant components. Applicants should be prepared to discuss the needed component qualifications with the NRC staff.
Reactor designs with new and novel features often have little, if any, operational experience in the commercial world. To ensure the health and safety of the public and the environment, NRC regulations (specifically, 10 CFR 50.43(e)) require applicants to obtain data for these new and novel design features. This confirmation (often called “qualification”) demonstrates the features will perform as designed in an operational facility.
Applicants should account for qualifying these new and novel design features over many years, due to the complexity of developing a testing program and/or modeling applications. For example, qualifying new nuclear fuel may take up to a decade, since test fuel spends a long time in a test reactor. Applicants should consider starting qualification activities well before engaging with the NRC. Any delay in the qualification activities may significantly extended the original proposed application submittal and facility operational dates.