Create an FP account to save articles to read later and in the FP mobile app. Licensing of advanced reactors will proceed in much the same way it has for conventional reactors for decades: slowly, expensively, and with an excess of precaution so extreme that observers have long quipped that the NRC’s view of nuclear safety is that the safest reactor is one that will never be built. The resulting regulatory standards and practices create enormous obstacles to nuclear innovation and the deployment of affordable nuclear energy at scales that could displace fossil fuels and prevent millions of deaths around the world, as well as play a critical role in addressing climate change