R&D conducted by nuclear industry on SMRs

The objective of this section is to highlight selected test facilities where ongoing R&D and testing is underway for some of the LW-SMR concepts underdevelopment in the US. Since these LW-SMRs are essentially based on conventional LWR technology, the R&D is more applied than for the A-SMRs. Typically, in the development of a reactor concept one of the key testing facilities in demonstrating new concepts is a thermal hydraulics test facility or loop where essentially all of the non-nuclear testing can be performed in an integrated fashion to examine prototypical thermal hydraulic conditions such as operating flows, temperatures, pressures, pump performance, material performance, etc., where the heat is supplied via electrically heated fuel assemblies or some other means. This type of facility is summarized for each of the three following LW-SMR vendors: NuScale, m-Power, and Westinghouse.