One common complaint is that every plant is a special snowflake that is validated, qualified and certified from scratch. Building more at once as a single project using a single plan could bring a lot of efficiency in the process.

I think that was the promise of Small Modular Reactors - you certify reactor by itself, making the plant certification much easier and faster. I'm not sure that materialised, though.

SMRs like SSR heatpipes are interesting. The issues of decentralization of controlled nuclear sites are many. It's better to have many SMRs in one location for safety, security, and backbench of resources and talent for engineering and operations. Simply, it scales better. Giving every Tom, Jane, and Sally corporation or town an SMR is an absolutely terrible idea.

Oh sure, I understood the effort to make it easier to "plop down" bunch large plants at once, not hundreds of small ones - though those are kind of interesting in isolated locations.

The other thing is old Soviet idea of using small nuclear reactors for heating - put small reactor to every town and run central heating to the housing estates, meaning you get to use close to 100 % of the heat output of the reactor, instead of the ~ 30 % the turbines give you in electricity.

Of course, if things go wrong, you have very efficient radioactivity delivery mechanism to every home. And outside of very cold climates it might be actually less efficient than a modern heat pump, even accounting for the heat conversion.

For local heating, ground source heat pumps are often a good idea.

Also, solar thermal energy storage is an idea, as well as the potential of solar PV hot working fluid cogen.

Stanford's SESI is interesting, but it would be awesome if solar, wind, or fusion could take the places of fission and methane in cogen applications.

I really don't understand that special snowflake thing.

From time to time I ride my bicycle along the levees of the Elbe river from Hamburg to Brunsbüttel. There are two NPP's on the way(now shut down, or in the process of being so. One on the other side of the river, Stade already is.).

Anyways, one called 'Brokdorf' irritated me. Why? Because it looks exactly like that thing in Iran called 'Busher' which I've seen in the media!

Why is that? Because Siemens built it there in license from whomever. Only the painting of the heavy lift shaft on the side of the reactor is different.

While there may be many differences in the details of the implementation inside I feel this special snowflake thing is an unnecessary complication.

Because viewed from afar there are maybe two to three dozen common types cookie cutted all over the world.

Should be possible for the insides also.

Just saying.

it's an open question.

but obviously there's no such thing as perfect regulation. it's imperfect, just as with everything else. so you have to ask the question.

regulations are often good and necessary, but they also often outlive their purpose and we end up with stagnation and regulatory capture from large corporations, where startups can't compete. or in the case of nuclear, even a Bill Gates' backed company has a hard time being able to build.

The usual answer from the unreasonable, irrational, and selfish Rand Paul-types is "gubberment always too big, so regulations bad."

I would modify Madison's quote: If everyone were angelic, proactive, and wise, no government or regulations would be necessary. Since none of these can ever be true, government and regulations will always be essential.

I'm in Austin and froze for 3 days because of piss-poor under-regulation due to lack of grid and backup power investment. ERCOT did they best they could while under-resourced and then thrown under the bus by the MSM and libertarian, anarcho-capitalist sympathizers like Abbott.