This isn't really the case, its not a conspiracy. What happened in the US is that because of public opinion and a few issues the regulator was replaced with a very conservative one.
When they wrote the regulation it was written when PWRs were the only commercial type of reactor, so regulations were hard coded to regulate those reactors.
And the DoE would not, at least not for free, even attempt to regulate anybody else. So if you wanted to get a license, you would literally have to pay the DoE to develop a licensing process first.
Even if you had the huge financial power to do this, it would likely be a decade+ before the DoE would even tell you what exactly the requirements are that your design has to pass.
Other regulator such as the one in Canada or Britain don't suffer from that technology dependency. But even without that, the regulator still needs to be motivated to regulate non standard reactor. In Britain this is not the case and that's why Moltex Energy for example, relocated from Britain to Canada.
In Canada, after CANDU was sold commercially, the Canadian regulator was very motivated to actually look into GenIV reactors and SMRs. Thus that is where all advanced reactor development takes place.
This is mostly not a fossil fuel conspiracy, but rather an over reaction based on uniformed politicians and uninformed public.
When they wrote the regulation it was written when PWRs were the only commercial type of reactor, so regulations were hard coded to regulate those reactors.
And the DoE would not, at least not for free, even attempt to regulate anybody else. So if you wanted to get a license, you would literally have to pay the DoE to develop a licensing process first.
Even if you had the huge financial power to do this, it would likely be a decade+ before the DoE would even tell you what exactly the requirements are that your design has to pass.
Other regulator such as the one in Canada or Britain don't suffer from that technology dependency. But even without that, the regulator still needs to be motivated to regulate non standard reactor. In Britain this is not the case and that's why Moltex Energy for example, relocated from Britain to Canada.
In Canada, after CANDU was sold commercially, the Canadian regulator was very motivated to actually look into GenIV reactors and SMRs. Thus that is where all advanced reactor development takes place.
This is mostly not a fossil fuel conspiracy, but rather an over reaction based on uniformed politicians and uninformed public.