As part of a pre-application readiness assessment, staff of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission identified “several challenging and/or significant issues” with the draft application for NuScale Power’s Voygr small modular reactor standard design while noting that it is a work in progress, according to a 15 November letter to the company.

Some information needed to evaluate the core design is missing, the NRC said in its letter. The letter said several chapters in the application are incomplete or have not been updated.

NRC staff said it identified several items lacking in NuScale’s standard design draft application, or SDAA, including fuel loading patterns, peaking factor curves and supporting information for systems related to performance and operability, among others.

NuScale said it will address the NRC’s comments in the final application which “remains on schedule for submittal this year”.