South Korea's Nuclear Safety and Security Commission Establishes Pre-Review System for SMRs to Accelerate Licensing

Recently, South Korea's Nuclear Safety and Security Commission (NSSC) officially launched a preliminary review system for small modular reactors (SMRs). This pre-licensing channel, established as new legislation, stems from the previously passed amendment to the Nuclear Safety Act and is designed to build a procedural bridge between early-stage reactor design and the highly rigorous formal licensing stage, thereby comprehensively streamlining the commercialization development process for SMRs.

The preliminary review will be conducted before the submission of a formal construction permit application, focusing on assessing whether various design concepts and technical blueprints can pass final safety justification, and identifying potential technical blind spots at an early stage. Because SMR designs vary greatly, developers in the past often spent years designing reactor types only to face rejection at the formal licensing stage. The new system allows developers to make targeted modifications before the design is finalized, thereby effectively saving hundreds of millions of won in wasted R&D resources and significantly reducing corporate compliance risks.

The system also enables regulators to gain early exposure to unfamiliar technologies. As many upcoming applications adopt non-light-water reactor concepts, such as molten salt reactors or liquid sodium-cooled reactors, the NSSC can use the pre-review stage to gain in-depth understanding of these new technologies and ensure that the regulatory framework keeps pace with developers' needs. The South Korean government has invested dedicated resources for this purpose, having allocated a cumulative 2.7 billion won to fund preliminary reviews and 8 billion won specifically to establish an evaluation framework for non-light-water reactor designs, while upgrading the SMR safety division to a regulatory department with permanent full-time staff.

Currently, about 10 domestic and international companies have formally expressed interest in using the system, with applications expected to begin in early 2027, the first batch covering three non-light-water reactor designs, followed by five additional light-water and non-light-water reactor designs in 2028. Early applicants include Korea's BEES, the United States' TerraPower, and Denmark's Saltfoss Energy. Choi Won-ho, head of South Korea's Nuclear Safety and Security Commission, stated that the preliminary review system not only alleviates the regulatory review uncertainty faced by companies but also enables relevant agencies to gain an earlier regulatory understanding of new technologies.

At the international level, South Korea places high importance on mutual recognition and harmonization of SMR regulatory standards. Choi Won-ho emphasized that ensuring international consistency in South Korea's SMR regulation is crucial, and that when exporting nuclear reactors overseas in the future, sharing and transferring safety regulatory expertise with host countries is of equal strategic importance as the nuclear reactor technology itself. This forward-looking regulatory layout marks South Korea's acceleration toward becoming a global exporter of advanced nuclear energy technology and standards.

With the full implementation of the pre-review system and the subsequent submission of the first batch of applications, South Korea is exploring a replicable regulatory model for global SMR commercialization through the dual drivers of policy and funding. Facing the upcoming wave of non-light-water reactor commercialization, how to balance the pace of technological innovation with the rigor of review will become a key challenge commonly faced by nuclear safety regulators worldwide.