[nickik]

Economics of scale are the reasons modern Gen3+ reactors are so huge.

From AP1000 wikipedia:

> The design traces its history to the System 80 design, which was produced in various locations around the world. Further development of the System 80 initially led to the AP600 concept, with a smaller 600 to 700 MWe output, but this saw limited interest. In order to compete with other designs that were scaling up in size in order to improve capital costs, the design re-emerged as the AP1000 and found a number of design wins at this larger size.

So modern PWR are usually build with 1GWe one location one reactor, huge economics of scale in terms of the size of the power plant. A AP1000 is not much bigger then an AP600.

> You forgot to mention the largest differentiator - eliminates the possibility of a global catastrophe.

I disagree. First of all, I think the possibility of a global catastrophe with a traditional PWR are already incredibly small, and when talking a modern build like an AP1000 the NuScale doesn't have that much better safety characteristics.

PWR are inherently problematic and require tons and tons of complex engineering to make them save and the error potential in such a solution are always there.