PJ Vogt

Other countries like China and Russia have built them.

I've looked at pictures of these.

They don't always have the iconic nuclear reactor cooling towers.

Instead, they often look like industrial compounds filled with a handful of boxy buildings.

Some of these Gen 4 reactors are expected to be large reactors.

These will be the size of the nuclear reactors you're used to, producing a gigawatt or more of electricity.

Full-size plants meant to replace the kind of nuclear power we have now, just safer and more efficient.

No large Gen 4 reactors exist anywhere in the world today.

Russia has a 1.2 gigawatt Gen 4 reactor expected to come online in the 2030s.

China is also expected to be a player in this market.

But at least in the US, Rachel doesn't believe that building reactors at this scale seems very feasible.

And generally speaking, is America still leading on the technological development for nuclear?

Or is it happening in other countries?

What does that look like?

Right.

In the U.S., where we don't have a government that builds its own big nuclear megaprojects, some private companies are now aiming at a different approach.

A few nuclear startups have just decided, okay, what if we made nuclear reactors smaller?

Which leads us to our next category, small modular reactors.

Small modular reactors are advanced nuclear power plants that produce anywhere from 50 to 300 megawatts of electricity.

Enough electricity to power a big town or a small city.