Although roughly a third of the ~440 commercial nuclear power plants operating world-wide have capacities less than 700 MWe, nearly all new plant designs available on the global market are large, monolithic plants with output capacities in the range of 1000-1700 MWe. The large
capacity and staggering price tag severely limit the number of customers that can reasonably consider purchasing new nuclear plants. Interest in smaller sized nuclear power plants has been growing steadily world-wide and is now emerging rapidly in the United States. NuScale Power is
developing a small modular reactor design that will offer a more affordable and more flexible approach to expanding the use of nuclear energy for a broader range of energy customers. Based on a standardized and highly robust 45 MWe nuclear module, a NuScale plant will be scalable up to 12 modules, each of which are factory fabricated and can be installed in an incremental fashion to maximize affordability and owner flexibility. A brief overview of the NuScale module and plant design will be presented with emphasis on the high level of safety, affordability and flexibility achieved by the modular
design.
Dr. Daniel Ingersoll is Director of the Office of Research Collaborations for NuScale Power. He joined NuScale in January 2012 to coordinate and develop R&D partnerships between NuScale and universities, laboratories and industry. Prior to joining NuScale, he was Senior Program Manager for the Small Modular Reactors R&D Office at Oak Ridge National Laboratory where he served as National Technical Director for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Small Modular Reactor program. During his 34 years at ORNL, he led several ORNL research organizations conducting radiation transport modeling, reactor shielding experiments and reactor physics analysis in support of advanced reactor development, advanced medical therapies, and defense applications. Dr. Ingersoll received a BS degree in Physics from Miami University in 1973 and a PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Illinois in 1977. He is a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society and former chairman of the ANS Radiation Protection and Shielding Division.
