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Maybe tiny refers to the power output. The article says it makes 50 megawatts.

Compare that to a nuclear plant near me which has two reactors that each generate 1280 megawatts.

So it would take about 25 of these to equal the power output of a traditional nuclear reactor.



Yes but it's inherently safer. Utility scale nuclear was scaled up from naval reactors which are smaller, use highly enriched uranium as opposed to LEU and are safer. Alvin Weinberg, the father of several LWR designs cautioned about the safety of utility scale reactors (17:51):

https://youtu.be/EviEN0ScOwg

The NuScale design also uses LEU and a plant is comprised of up to 12 of these modules sitting in water pools. You can view it as a battery pack where batteris are continously rotated as they are refuelled.


To nitpick, some naval reactors are designed to use LEU. E.g. French submarines run on 7% enriched fuel. And reportedly Chinese subs also use LEU.


They are intended to replace small coal plants out West where coal is the only viable option for baseline load.




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