US approves bigger nuclear reactor design for NuScale, document says
NuScale had originally sought and received NRC approval for a smaller 50 MW reactor design. The company sought a bigger 77 MW design to improve economics and performance of its planned small modular reactors (SMRs).
Backers of nuclear power say SMRs will be safer from proliferation risks and can reduce costs for multiple plants because they can be built in a factory instead of onsite. Critics of SMRs say they will be more expensive to operate than conventional reactors, which are larger and have economy of scale.
NuScale, the only U.S. company with an approved design, wants to build the country's first SMR. But in 2023 it axed its first project with a municipal power group in Utah, despite a U.S. government promise of $1.35 billion in funding over 10 years for the plant, known as the Carbon Free Power Project. As costs rose, several towns had pulled out of the project.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
24 minutes ago
- The Guardian
IMF upgrades global growth forecast as Trump tariffs ease, but warns on risks
Global growth will be stronger than previously expected this year after Donald Trump scaled back his most extreme tariff threats, the International Monetary Fund said as it upgraded the economic outlook for 2025. The Washington-based organisation said a 'de-escalation in tariffs' by the White House spurred a recovery in global trade and a broader economic expansion, though US policies remain 'highly uncertain' and risks to growth remain 'firmly on the downside'. The IMF chief economist, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, upgraded a forecast for global growth in 2025 to 3% from an estimate in April of 2.8%. The outlook for 2026 was upgraded from 3% to 3.1%. The global economy grew by 3.3% in 2024. Most regions benefited from the more benign economic outlook, including the UK, which is expected to grow by 1.2% this year – 0.1 percentage points higher than in the IMF's April outlook. In April, Donald Trump threatened to impose severe import tariffs on the world's biggest exporters of goods, including the UK, EU, China and South Korea, to combat what the US president believed was unfair competition. Stock markets dived and the US dollar fell as investors, spooked by the potential hit to world trade, bought safe havenassets. The US later delayed or reduced tariffs in return for commitments to buy US-made goods, reversing market falls as investors concluded 'Trump always chickens out' – or Taco for short. At the weekend Trump agreed to end months of speculation over whether he would impose 30% tariffs on EU goods imports, saying he would limit the rise to 15% in exchange for concessions from the EU, including the purchase of almost £600bn worth of US oil and gas. The French prime minister described the US-EU trade deal as a 'dark day' for Europe. Japan recently agreed to buy Boeing planes as part of a deal to limit tariffs on its exports to the US to 15%. And Trump has also scaled back tariffs on Chinese goods, though only after Beijing retaliated by imposing punitive tariffs on rare earth metals needed by defence industry manufacturers. Gourinchas said the US had 'partly reversed course', reducing the US effective tariff rate from 24% to about 17%. But he added: 'Despite these welcome developments, tariffs remain historically high, and global policy remains highly uncertain, with only a few countries having reached fully fleshed-out trade agreements.' The White House has set a deadline of 1 August for several countries, including Vietnam and South Korea, to sign deals with the US. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion 'Without comprehensive agreements, the ongoing trade uncertainty could increasingly weigh on investment and activity,' Gourinchas said. He said the situation could also worsen should attacks on central banks intensify, undermining their authority. Trump has repeatedly called on Jerome Powell, the chair of the US Federal Reserve, to cut interest rates, calling him a 'numbskull' for failing to do so. 'It is important to reaffirm and preserve the principle of central bank independence. The evidence is overwhelming that independent central banks, with a narrow mandate to pursue price and economic stability, are essential to anchoring inflation expectations,' he added. 'That central banks around the world achieved a successful 'soft landing' despite the recent surge in inflation owes a great deal to their independence and hard-earned credibility.' Trade data released on Tuesday showed that imports of goods into the US fell by $11.5bn (£8.6bn) in June, to $264.2bn, after a rise in imports earlier this year as companies tried to beat Donald Trump's tariffs. This narrowed the US trade deficit to $86.0bn in June, down from $96.4bn in May.
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
‘Game-changing' new Alzheimer's drug could slow progression of disease
An Alzheimer's drug that clears away plaque build-up in the brain could slow progression of the disease and delay the onset of symptoms, early trials have shown. There is currently no cure for the disease, which can severely affect memory and impact people's ability to carry out daily tasks, and the medicines available can only reduce symptoms. But a new drug called Trontinemab is showing promising results, the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Toronto was told. The drug has been tested on a small number of patients, but 49 out of 54 with early-stage Alzheimer's showed signs of improvement within 28 weeks during a trial, according to Roche, the pharmaceutical company behind the drug. Researchers said 91 per cent of the participants showed a reduction in clusters of protein on their brains, known as amyloid plaques – a key marker of Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's is thought to be caused by an abnormal build-up of this protein around brain cells, while another protein called tau forms tangles within brain cells. These can interrupt the chemical messengers responsible for sending signals between brain cells, according to the NHS. The new drug was found to reduce amyloid proteins to a level so low that scan results on patients taking it for seven months were considered to be 'amyloid negative'. It is thought that the clearance of plaques slows down the progression of the disease and delays the onset of symptoms. 'Alzheimer's disease represents one of the greatest challenges in healthcare today, and tackling it requires early detection and effective therapeutics,' Dr Levi Garraway, chief medical officer of Roche, said. He added: 'Trontinemab is designed to target a key driver of Alzheimer's disease biology more effectively in the brain. Combining new treatment avenues with advanced diagnostics may enable earlier and potentially more effective intervention.' Professor Sir John Hardy, the chairman of molecular biology of neurological disease at University College London's Institute of Neurology, who was not involved in the trial, told The Telegraph the drug was a 'massive improvement' and works faster than other Alzheimer's drugs on the market. 'There is no doubt this could be game-changing. We hope that if we can use these drugs to people early, we can halt the progression of disease, even before people have symptoms. Now we need to see the size of the clinical effect,' he said. However, the drug does have some side effects, with five participants of 149 (3 per cent) suffering from lesions or swelling in their brains after taking it. But all the participants recovered, and it was considered to be safer than other Alzheimer's drugs that have resulted in 17 per cent of participants experiencing similar side effects. The final part of the trial, which will test the drug on a large number of patients, is yet to be carried out. But if it is successful, health bodies in the UK will need to decide whether it is cost-effective enough to use on the NHS. An estimated 982,000 people are living with some form of dementia, including Alzheimer's, in the UK, with the disease most common in people over the age of 65. But more than a third of people with the condition do not have a diagnosis. The number of those with the disease is expected to rise to 1.4 million by 2040, according to the Alzheimer's Society.
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
Higher US tariffs part of the price Europe was willing to pay for its security and arms for Ukraine
France's prime minister described it as a 'dark day' for the European Union, a 'submission' to U.S. tariff demands. Commentators said EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen's handshake with President Donald Trump amounted to capitulation. The trouble is, Europe depends mightily on the United States, and not just for trade. Mirroring Trump, Von der Leyen gushed that the arrangement she endorsed over the weekend to set U.S. tariff levels on most European exports to 15%, which is 10% higher than currently, was 'huge.' Her staff texted reporters insisting that the pact, which starts to enter force on Friday, is the 'biggest trade deal ever.' A month after NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte ingratiated himself with Trump by referring to him as 'daddy,' the Europeans had again conceded that swallowing the costs and praising an unpredictable president is more palatable than losing America. 'It's not only about the trade. It's about security. It's about Ukraine. It's about current geopolitical volatility. I cannot go into all the details,' EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič told reporters Monday. 'I can assure you it was not only about the trade,' he insisted, a day after 'the deal' was sealed in an hour-long meeting once Trump finished playing a round of golf with his son at the course he owns in Scotland. The state of Europe's security dependency Indeed, Europe depends on the U.S. for its security and that security is anything but a game, especially since Russia invaded Ukraine. U.S. allies are convinced that, should he win, President Vladimir Putin is likely to take aim at one of them next. So high are these fears that European countries are buying U.S. weapons to help Ukraine to defend itself. Some are prepared to send their own air defense systems and replace them with U.S. equipment, once it can be delivered. 'We're going to be sending now military equipment and other equipment to NATO, and they'll be doing what they want, but I guess it's for the most part working with Ukraine,' Trump said Sunday, sounding ambivalent about America's role in the alliance. The Europeans also are wary about a U.S. troop drawdown, which the Pentagon is expected to announce by October. Around 84,000 U.S. personnel are based in Europe, and they guarantee NATO's deterrent effect against an adversary like Russia. At the same time, Trump is slapping duties on America's own NATO partners, ostensibly due to concerns about U.S. security interests, using Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, a logic that seems absurd from across the Atlantic. Weaning Europe off foreign suppliers 'The EU is in a difficult situation because we're very dependent on the U.S. for security,' said Niclas Poitiers at the Bruegel research institution in Brussels. 'Ukraine is a very big part of that, but also generally our defense is underwritten by NATO.' 'I think there was not a big willingness to pick a major fight, which is the one (the EU) might have needed with the U.S.' to better position itself on trade, Poitiers told The Associated Press about key reasons for von der Leyen to accept the tariff demands. Part of the agreement involves a commitment to buy American oil and gas. Over the course of the Russia-Ukraine war, now in its fourth year, most of the EU has slashed its dependence on unreliable energy supplies from Russia, but Hungary and Slovakia still have not. 'Purchases of U.S. energy products will diversify our sources of supply and contribute to Europe's energy security. We will replace Russian gas and oil with significant purchases of U.S. LNG, oil and nuclear fuels,' von der Leyen said in Scotland on Sunday. In essence, as Europe slowly weans itself off Russian energy it is also struggling to end its reliance on the United States for its security. The Trump administration has warned its priorities now lie elsewhere, in Asia, the Middle East and on its own borders. That was why European allies agreed at NATO's summit last month to spend hundreds of billions of dollars more on defense over the next decade. Primarily for their own security, but also to keep America among their ranks. The diplomacy involved was not always elegant. 'Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win,' Rutte wrote in a private text message to Trump, which the U.S. leader promptly posted on social media. Rutte brushed off questions about potential embarrassment or concern that Trump had aired it, saying: 'I have absolutely no trouble or problem with that because there's nothing in it which had to stay secret.' A price Europe feels it must pay Von der Leyen did not appear obsequious in her meeting with Trump. She often stared at the floor or smiled politely. She did not rebut Trump when he said that only America is sending aid to Gaza. The EU is world's biggest supplier of aid to the Palestinians. With Trump's threat of 30% tariffs hanging over European exports — whether real or brinksmanship is hard to say — and facing the prospect of a full-blown trade dispute while Europe's biggest war in decades rages, 15% may have been a cheap price to pay. 'In terms of the economic impact on the EU economy itself, it will be negative,' Poitiers said. 'But it's not something that is on a comparable magnitude like the energy crisis after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or even COVID.' 'This is a negative shock for our economy, but it is something that's very manageable,' he said. It remains an open question as to how long this entente will last. ___
