But since you are asking, here's a typical statement from the linked article:
> Nuclear grade components don’t necessarily have higher performance requirements than conventional components - the cost instead mostly comes from the documentation and testing to ensure they’ll meet their performance requirements.
Now consider this: the NRC approved the NuScale reactor design [1]. Yet, NuScale never built a demonstration reactor, the entire approval was based on computer models. A regulatory body hell-bent to stymie new reactors would not have done that. This approval, in my mind, shows that the NRC is quite reasonable.
And by the way, I did spend some time going over some of the approval documents. I remember a dissension paper that I found, where one NRC inspector expressed dissatisfaction with some corner case concerning borated water. I can't find it now, but I found some paragraphs in one of the final documents, where the NRC describes the situation ([2] page 48):
> The applicant also analyzed postulated scenarios involving extended DHRS operation with the secondary side water level in the steam generator tubes above the primary side water level in the reactor vessel downcomer, hereafter referred to as the boiling/condensing heat transfer mode. In this scenario, the boiling of borated primary coolant in the reactor core generates steam, which subsequently condenses on the section of the steam generator tubes that is filled with secondary coolant and above the downcomer water level. The resulting formation of condensate, if left unmitigated, would tend to dilute the boron concentration of the coolant in the downcomer.
NuScale spent a lot of money and man-hours (if I remember correctly $0.5 BN and 1.5 million man-hours) in order to secure the approval. But reading the approval documents on the NRC website, you get the idea that all the work was actually needed. Reactors are just very complex machines with many failure modes.
[1] https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/smr/licensing-acti...