Peter Lobner
Anyone interested in the current state of advanced nuclear reactor technology should enjoy a visit to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s ARIS website. Here’s a link to the ARIS home page:
Check out the “Publications” tab for several IAEA documents that can be downloaded as pdf files for free. I recommend one document in particular: “Status of Small and Medium Sized Reactor Designs, “ published in September 2011. This document contains 1-page summaries of 31 small and medium reactor designs from around the world, each with a small color picture. I was a bit surprised by the very large number of designs and the diverse technologies embodied in these nuclear power plants. If you’re really interested in how much small and medium reactors have advanced in the past 16 years, you can compare this 2011 document with the similar, but much more detailed, 1995 IAEA document: IAEA-TECDOC-881, “Design and Development of Small and Medium Reactor Systems 1995,” which you can download as a pdf file for free at the following link:
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/te_881_web.pdf