Safety Modeling Enables Nuclear Licensing

Sandia’s MELCOR software and multi‑decade consequence studies have turned safety uncertainty into quantitative assessments that regulators use to judge acceptability. Extending those models to advanced reactors is presented as a prerequisite for the NRC to evaluate, regulate, and thereby enable deployment of new reactor types. — Who builds and controls the detailed safety models (and their assumptions) can determine whether advanced nuclear technologies clear the regulatory and political hurdles to scale.