Approaches to facilitate near-urban siting

Small reactor concepts are attractive to be sited near population centres because  

These siting considerations lead to a requirement for very high levels of safety and reliability. 

In the case of fast neutron spectrum reactors, the efficacy of inherent and passive safety features to anticipated transients without scram (ATWS) has been well established by testing in the EBR-II, FFTF, and Phoenix reactors [5 and 6], So too has passive decay heat removal. The severe accident hazard of reactivity addition upon core rearrangement in small fast reactors is addressed by a range of approaches including  

While LWR type thermal reactors using uranium dioxide fuel of low enrichment do not experience a reactivity insertion hazard due to compaction, it is noted that some small reactor concepts with thermal neutron spectrum that are based on cermet or TRISO fuel at enrichments approaching 20% might face fuel reconfiguration reactivity addition issues, which requires further examination. 

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