The Tennessee Valley Authority has welcomed the acceptance for regulatory review of its early site permit application for the Clinch River site in Tennessee as a milestone towards the potential use of small modular reactors in its operating fleet.

NuScale Power has asked the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to approve the company's small modular reactor commercial power plant design. This is the first-ever SMR design certification application to be submitted to the NRC.

Rolls-Royce has named the companies it is working with to bring a small modular reactor (SMR) to market in the UK. Amec Foster Wheeler, Nuvia and Arup, together with the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, are working with Rolls-Royce to develop the latest technology reactors, a spokesman for the British engineering firm told World Nuclear News today. "Other names will emerge in due course," he added.

Four Russian cities have expressed an interest in using small reactors to supply heat and power, according to Yuriy Kuznetsov of NA Dollezhal Research and Development Institute of Power Engineering (NIKIET). A Rosatom feasibility study has concluded that up to 38 cogeneration reactors could potentially be deployed at 14 sites for this purpose.

Canadian reactor designer StarCore Nuclear has applied to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) to begin the vendor design review process for its Generation IV high temperature gas reactor (HTGR).

Construction of China's first floating nuclear power plant has officially begun, China General Nuclear announced. The demonstration unit is expected to be completed by 2020.

GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) and Southern Nuclear are to collaborate on the development and licensing of fast reactors including GEH's Prism sodium-cooled fast reactor, the companies announced yesterday.

Small modular reactors offer significant benefits to the UK, experts have said, but government must clarify whether it wants near-term deployment or maximum value to domestic industry, while industry has to efficiently mass produce to realise economic savings.

A ceremony was held on 4 October in Pevek, Russia, to mark the start of construction of the coastal infrastructure for the first-of-a-kind floating nuclear power plant. The floating power and heat plant is set to be commissioned there in 2019.

Rolls-Royce will in the "coming weeks" announce the consortium it has formed to launch a small modular reactor in the UK, a spokesman for the British company told World Nuclear News today. The consortium could provide a £100 billion ($127 billion) boost to the UK economy because the companies involved are either UK-owned or have a strong UK presence, the spokesman added.

Small modular reactors could be operating in the UK by 2030 if action is taken to create investor confidence through development of a suitable policy framework, according to a new report by the Energy Technologies Institute.

Licensing small modular reactors "presents a new opportunity for standardisation" in the nuclear power industry, Vanessa Jakovich, counsel at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, told delegates at the World Nuclear Association’s 41st Annual Symposium in London on 16 September.