China Science & Technology Forum

[bobsm]

Is Chinese 100-Petaflopper Around the Corner?

April 14, 2016
Tiffany Trader

A little over one year ago, export blocks put in place by the US government threatened to derail China’s plans to upgrade its Tianhe-2 supercomputer, the world’s fastest since June 2013, to its originally planned capacity of 100 petaflops. At the time, many in the industry anticipated that the efforts to block China’s supercomputing capability by banning access to US technology from Intel and other hardware vendors would backfire.

Indeed, China was sufficiently incentivized to redouble efforts on its homegrown supercomputing program and it had the cash from the squashed Intel deal to do it. Less than six months after news of the blacklist came out, China revealed plans to build not one, but two 100-petaflops supercomputers using a variety of native chip, accelerator and interconnect technologies. The stalled Tianhe-2 upgrade was back on the table — supposedly slated for late-2016.

VR World, the same publication that broke the blacklisting story last year, is now reporting that China is on track to “debut” that fully-realized Tianhe-2 supercomputer in June at the 2016 International Supercomputing Conference in Frankfurt, Germany. If the system is early, it wouldn’t be the first time China exceeded expectations — the country launched its 33-petaflops (LINPACK) Tianhe-2 two years early.

From the VR World report:

“The new Tianhe-2 represents a hybrid design, featuring two new additions, as the old Xeon Phi cards are being phased out. Phytium Technologies recently delivered their “Mars” processors in the form of PCI Express cards that replaced the Xeon Phi cards, and motherboards to upgrade the system. Given that there are 48,000 add-in boards installed, the new 64-core design enables the system to reach its original performance targets. With the three million new ARM cores inside the Tianhe-2, its estimated Rpeak performance in the Linpack benchmark should exceed 100 PFLOPS.”

Phytium Technologies*, the progenitor of the “Mars” ARM-based processors, was founded in August 2012. Although the planned target for Tianhe-2 was 100 petaflops peak and around 80 petaflops LINPACK, VRWorld reports that there is another planned iteration (using original Xeon CPUs plus homegrown ShenWei processors and Phytium accelerator cards) sufficient to boost the machine’s top speed 2-3X further.

Tienhe-2 was built by China’s National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) in collaboration with the Chinese IT firm Inspur, using 32,000 Intel Xeon E5-2692 v2 processors and 48,000 Intel Xeon Phi 31S1P coprocessors. The machine has led the TOP500 list since June 2013 with a performance of 33.86 petaflops on the LINPACK benchmark.

China’s processor developments are sponsored by the State High-Tech Development Plan, known as the 863 Program, which is funded and administered by the Chinese government to stimulate the development of advanced technologies for the purpose of strengthening China’s homegrown industries and reducing or eliminating dependence on foreign interests.


http://www.hpcwire.com/2016/04/14/chinese-100-petaflopper-coming-sooner-expected/


*Phytium Technology is an upstart Chinese chip maker

 

[bobsm]

WATCH OUT INTEL AND SAMSUNG: TSMC IS GEARING UP FOR 7NM PROCESSING WITH TRIAL PRODUCTION
By Kevin Parrish — April 20, 2016
1

Peellden/Wikimedia

The race to shrink technology and build faster, more energy-efficient components is heating up, as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC) is pushing to beat Samsung and Intel in the 7-nanometer (nm) process technology race by launching trial production during the first half of 2017. The company originally revealed its plans in chairman Morris Chang’s report provided to shareholders on April 14.

In last week’s investors meeting, TSMC Co-CEO Mark Liu added to Chang’s report, stating that the company will likely move its 7nm process technology to volume production during the first half of 2018. He said that over twenty customers are currently “engaged” with the company regarding the new process technology, and that fifteen customer tape-outs are scheduled to take place in 2017.

“N7 is a further extension of N10 technology, with more than 60 percent in logic density gain and 30-percent to 40-percent reduction in power consumption,” Liu told investors. That is, compared to 10nm process technology, 7nm will produce chips with less power consumption and more processing capability on the same sized chip. According to Liu, TSMC’s new 7nm processing will be dedicated tomobile and “high-performance computing” applications.

What’s great about this new technology is that it uses nearly all of the same equipment (95-percent) that’s used in the 10nm processing, meaning the company doesn’t have to spend loads of money updating its foundries with tons of new equipment. This should give TSMC a competitive edge in that component manufacturing contracts with customers could be hard to beat on a pricing level.

During the meeting, Liu also talked about the company’s 10nm process technology, which will mainly target mobile applications. A number of customer tape-outs are already on-hand since the first quarter of 2016, and more will likely roll in over the next several quarters. Liu doesn’t expect a “sizable demand” for 10nm processing until the second quarter of 2017.

As a refresher, a “tape-out” is the final design of a printed circuit board or an integrated circuit. At one time, these designs were delivered to the manufacturing foundry as data stored on magnetic tape. The term also refers back to a time when printed circuit boards were mapped out by manually placing black line tape down on mylar sheets in an enlarged layout to create a photomask.

In addition to the 7nm news, TSMC recently reported its first quarter results, stating that shipments related to its 16nm and 20nm process technologies accounted for 23 percent of its wafer revenues while its 28nm business accounted for 30 percent of its wafer revenues. Another 53 percent of those wafer revenues were based on “advanced technologies.” Overall, business seemed unaffected in terms of revenue despite the earthquake in February causing a slight delay in wafer shipments.

Although Liu did not reveal during the meeting what companies have already jumped on the 7nm process bandwagon, ARM announced a multi-year agreementlast month to collaborate with TSMC on 7nm FinFET process technology to create high-performance, low-power processors. FinFET is short for Fin Field Effect Transistor, which is a 3D transistor that resembles a fin and is used in current processors due to the technology’s superior scalability. The two companies previously collaborated on chips based on 10nm and 16nm FinFET processing.



http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/tsmc-7nm-2017/

 

[JSCh]

Innovative protective suit for firefighters unveiled
By Kong Defang (People's Daily Online) 13:25, April 21, 2016

The new protective suit for firefighters. (Photo/Beijing Daily)​

China will soon equip firefighters with a new type of protective suit, which will be multifunctional, safe and comfortable. A reporter from Beijing Daily saw the newly developed suit in the Haidian firefighting division of Beijing on April 20.

According to an official with Beijing's fire department, advanced technologies from Chinese space suits are being applied to the design of the new firefighting suit. No wonder the new suit is so impressive!

The helmet, which resembles Iron Man's helmet, boasts various functions including a built-in phone, information collection and temperature monitoring. Under the face shield is a respirator, and the red triangle on top of the helmet functions as both a headlamp and camera. When the firefighter enters the scene of a fire, the helmet's information collection system transfers what the firefighter is seeing to the remote control station.

The helmet is also equipped with an alarm. If the firefighter is still for 20 seconds, the helmet begins to flash red and blue lights and buzz loudly. Because the suit has a location function, backup firefighters are then able to find and rescue their endangered comrade.

The new suit also has an automatic cooling system. A tester wore the suit in a high-temperature cabin for 30 minutes and still felt comfortable. In addition, the new suit can monitor the wearer's motion, pulse and other vital signs. As soon as it enters an extreme environment , the suit goes into action to protect and assist its wearer.

 

[JSCh]

Chinese scientists discover how brain knows it's turning
Source: Xinhua | 2016-04-22 03:54:19 | Editor: huaxia

WASHINGTON, April 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers looking at macaques said Thursday they have solved the long-standing puzzle over how our brains perceive we're moving in a curvilinear trajectory, such as making turns while driving.

In daily life, our complex motion trajectories typically contain two independent components: straight-line movement and rotation.

Correspondingly, our inner ears have evolved two sets of special sensory organs: the sphere-like otoliths detect linear motion, while the semi-circular canals detect rotational movement.

Information collected by these organs is then sent to the central nervous system in the brain, where two distinct sets of neurons help us sense linear and rotational movement, but the new study identified a third set of neurons in the macaque sensory cortex that respond optimally to curved motion.

"It's a very interesting question as to why our brain evolved this way," said corresponding author Yong Gu, a neuroscientist at the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"We don't have to have these curved motion neurons in the sensory area of the brain... Our hunch is that representation of curved motion in sensory cortex helps animals rapidly detect this type of movement, and save the working load of the decision centers for other important neural computations."

Gu and lab member Zhixian Cheng made their discovery by placing macaques in moving platforms and attaching brain electrodes to individual neurons to measure how often and when they fired.

"People have known that linear and rotational motion converged in the sensory cortex, and we found that certain neurons fire more spikes when the linear or rotational information are available at the same time for these neurons," Gu said.

"This might have been expected, but we now propose that these neurons could represent curvilinear motion."

Further research showed that neurons that perceive curved motion are widely distributed in the sensory cortex.

The findings were published in the U.S. journal Cell Reports.

 

[bobsm]

Chinese scientists modify gene to make humans immune to HIV
By Cheng Yingqi in Beijing and Xu Jingxi in Guangzhou (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2016-04-22 16:21


In a major breakthrough that has the potential to revolutionize the whole fight against HIV/AIDS, Chinese scientists recently modified a gene in embryos in an attempt to make humans immune to HIV virus.

Researchers from the Guangzhou Medical University used a gene editing technique named CRISPR/Cas to replace the CCR5 gene in 26 human embryos with an HIV-resistant mutation. Only four embryos were successfully edited, while the other 22 cases failed to produce the desired results.

The research was reported in the Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics.

"In this study, we demonstrated that the HIV-resistant mutation could be introduced into early human embryos through the CRISPR system," said Fan Yong, a researcher of the Guangzhou Medical University and an author of the paper.

The CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technique, better known as the molecular Swiss army knife, is a technology developed by US scientist Jennifer Doudna and French scientist Emmanuelle Charpentier in 2012.

Since then, scientists from across the globe have been using the technology to edit animals' gene in the laboratory.

Huang Junjiu, a biologist at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, was the first to apply the technique to humans. He reported his experiment on 71 human embryos in Nature magazine in April 2015.


More @ http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-04/22/content_24766024.htm

 

[JSCh]

April 22, 2016
Huazhong University of Science and Technology Crowned the ASC16 Champion | HPCwire

Sponsored Content by Inspur

ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge 2016 (ASC16) concluded in Wuhan on April 22. The co-host Huazhong University of Science and Technology won the championship and the e Prize with its extraordinary performance. Shanghai Jiaotong University was runner-up, and Zhejiang University won the Highest Computing Award. In addition, Nanyang Technological University, Beihang University, National University of Defense Technology and Sun Yat-sen University won the Application Innovation Awards. The most popular team prize was won by Hong Kong Baptist University and Nanyang Technological University.

ASC16 is the largest supercomputing contest in the world, participated by 175 university teams from six continents. After preliminary matches, 16 teams were selected to attend the finals held in Wuhan, China this week. The finals required participating teams to design their own supercomputing system within the constraint of 3000 watt and apply it to various frontier scientific and engineering projects, such as optimized benchmark test, ocean simulation, material science, life genes and in-depth learning.

In the e Price challenge, team Huazhong University of Technology designed a outstanding indepth neural network optimization solution addressing the in-depth learning DNN intelligent voice recognition, which achieved highly precise training model for around 600,000 voice data involving English, Chinese Mandarin and Sichuan Dialect, improving the computing performance by 108 times the highest.

Team Zhejiang University used highly optimized isomer accelerating supercomputing system to run the internationally accepted HPL benchmark test, and made the new world record with a floating point computing speed at 12.03 trillion times per second.

Jack Dongarra, Chair of ASC Expert Committee, one of the sponsor of Top500 list in the world, and professor of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and University of Tennessee said in the interview: “So many students gathered together in the contest. The energy inspired is truly meaningful to the development of supercomputers. The contest will influence the students’ future and guide their career development. This type of contest is fantastic.”

Hu Leijun, Vice President of Inspur Group, the sponsoring organization of the contest, believed that the computing capability had become a new production element along with the rapid development in information technology, bringing more changes to the society, production and life. With this trend, supercomputers were no longer a cost, but an investment. Its development would become one of the important element symbolizing the overall strength of a country.

Chen Jianguo, Vice Chancellor of the host Huazhong University of Science and Technology commented that ASC16 closely followed the latest development of information technology and linked the technological innovation with practical needs in social life. Its commitment to the education of young students in supercomputers would help to cultivate a group of high-quality supercomputing talents with international visions.

ASC16 was co-organized by ASC Community, Inspur and Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Initiated by China, ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge aims at promoting exchanges and cultivation of young supercomputing talents among countries and regions, improving the application and R&D in supercomputing and promoting technological and industrial innovation through supercomputing.

 

[JSCh]

A Pinch of Salt Completes the Recipe for 2-D Materials in Supercapacitors
By Dexter Johnson
Posted 22 Apr 2016 | 20:00 GMT

In joint research involving Drexel University in Philadelphia, and Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) and Tsinghua University, both in China, scientists have found a way to formulate two-dimensional materials that are purer and have surface areas much closer to their theoretical maximum. The expected benefit: supercapacitors that store energy far better than ever. How did they do it? It turns out that they just needed to add a pinch of salt to coax the best out of them.

In research described in the journal Nature Communications, the international team used the surface of salt crystals to serve as growth templates for transitional metal oxides. That new ingredient, say the researchers, makes the final product bake up bigger and better.



Continue -> A Pinch of Salt Completes the Recipe for 2-D Materials in Supercapacitors - IEEE Spectrum

 

[SBUS-CXK]

Like Taiwan....

I feel mainland China research projects are following the trend in the West (to help Westerners), rather than for helping the local people to improve their living standard.

Basic salary to 1400 RMB in Tibet. About 14000 rupees. All in all, life is improving. The middle class has grown. This is China.

 

[bobsm]

Chinese Scientists Discover How Brain Knows it's Turning
Apr 22, 2016

Photo provided by Xinqiao Hospital of Third Military Medical University in southwest China's Chongqing on Aug. 5, 2015 shows a 3D image of white matter of brain by 3.0 tesla (3.0T) MRI. (Xinhua)

Chinese researchers looking at macaques said Thursday they have solved the long-standing puzzle over how our brains perceive we're moving in a curvilinear trajectory, such as making turns while driving.

In daily life, our complex motion trajectories typically contain two independent components: straight-line movement and rotation.

Correspondingly, our inner ears have evolved two sets of special sensory organs: the sphere-like otoliths detect linear motion, while the semi-circular canals detect rotational movement.

Information collected by these organs is then sent to the central nervous system in the brain, where two distinct sets of neurons help us sense linear and rotational movement, but the new study identified a third set of neurons in the macaque sensory cortex that respond optimally to curved motion.

"It's a very interesting question as to why our brain evolved this way," said corresponding author Yong Gu, a neuroscientist at the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"We don't have to have these curved motion neurons in the sensory area of the brain... Our hunch is that representation of curved motion in sensory cortex helps animals rapidly detect this type of movement, and save the working load of the decision centers for other important neural computations."

Gu and lab member Zhixian Cheng made their discovery by placing macaques in moving platforms and attaching brain electrodes to individual neurons to measure how often and when they fired.

"People have known that linear and rotational motion converged in the sensory cortex, and we found that certain neurons fire more spikes when the linear or rotational information are available at the same time for these neurons," Gu said.

"This might have been expected, but we now propose that these neurons could represent curvilinear motion."

Further research showed that neurons that perceive curved motion are widely distributed in the sensory cortex.

The findings were published in the U.S. journal Cell Reports. (Xinhua)


http://english.cas.cn/newsroom/news/201604/t20160422_162249.shtml

 

[bobsm]

Scientists are developing graphene solar panels that generate energy when it rains
Non-stop renewables.

DAVID NIELD 8 APR 2016

Solar power is making huge strides as a reliable, renewable energy source, but there's still a lot of untapped potential in terms of the efficiency of photovoltaic cells and what happens at night and during inclement weather. Now a solution has been put forward in the form of producing energy from raindrops.

Key to the new process is graphene: a 'wonder' material we've heard plenty about before. Because raindrops are not made up of pure water, and contain various salts that split up into positive and negative ions, a team from the Ocean University of China in Qingdao thinks we can harness power via a simple chemical reaction. Specifically, they want to use graphene sheets to separate the positively charged ions in rain (including sodium, calcium, and ammonium) and in turn generate electricity.

Early tests, using slightly salty water to simulate rain, have been promising: the researchers were able to generate hundreds of microvolts and achieve a respectable 6.53 percent solar-to-electric conversion efficiency from their customised solar panel.

For the experiment, the team used an inexpensive, thin-film solar cell called a dye-sensitised solar cell. After adding a layer of graphene to the cell, it was put on a transparent backing of indium tin oxide and plastic. The resulting 'all-weather' solar cell concept was then equipped to produce power from both sunshine and the rain substitute.

What's happening here is that the positively charged ions are binding to the ultra-thin layer of graphene and forming a double layer (technically referred to as a pseudocapacitor) with the electrons already present. The potential energy difference between the two layers is strong enough to generate an electric current.

The experiment is still just in the 'proof of concept' phase, so there's work to be done, but the researchers hope their findings can "guide the design" of future all-weather solar cells and contribute to the growing influence of renewable energy.

They're now working on adjusting the technology to handle the variety of ions found in real raindrops and figuring how to generate enough electricity from the typically low concentrations they come in.

It's not the first time graphene has been used to boost solar energy technologies: earlier this year, a team from the UK was able to create a graphene-based material that's very effective at absorbing ambient heat and light, and which could eventually lead to solar panels that can work with the diffuse sunlight that finds its way indoors.

If these scientists get their way, in the future, photovoltaic cells may not be hampered by a lack of direct sunshine at all.

The study has been published in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

http://www.sciencealert.com/how-graphene-could-help-solar-panels-produce-energy-when-it-s-raining

 

[JSCh]

China’s S & T talents reach 81m
Updated: Apr 24,2016 10:45 AM Xinhua

Personnel involved in scientific research and technology development in China had reached 81.14 million, the world’s largest, by the end of 2014, said a research report.

The report on China’s science and technology human resource in 2014, issued by China Association for Science and Technology, said the statistics cover people who have obtained a natural science diploma above junior college level and those who do S & T related jobs despite lack of a diploma.

By the end of 2014, 76.21 million people belonged to the first category, and 4.93 million the second category, according to the report.

The S & T human resource is profiled as aged 33.73 in average and having 36.6 percent as women. A majority, 68.3 percent, of them either have a degree or work in the field of engineering, followed by medicine, science and agriculture.

 

[JSCh]

Chinese security scanners detect TATP
2016-04-23 07:46 Xinhua

A Chinese company is ready to market new security scanners which can detect triacetone triperoxide (TATP), the explosive used by terrorists in the Paris attacks.

An article published in the Journal of Analytical Chemistry on March 31 said the scanner can detect the explosives including TATP and hexamethylene triperoxide diamine (HMTD), commonly used in suicide bombings but undetectable by conventional security scanners.

Dalian Ruptech Co. Ltd. bought the patent for 20 million yuan (3 million U.S. dollars) from the developer -- Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and plans to manufacture 800 to 1,000 scanners each year.

The explosives TATP and HMTD were used in both the Belgium bombings in March and the Paris attacks in 2015. The explosives can be simply synthesized, and materials for making them are easily obtained. Since the explosives contain no nitro groups, they are difficult to detected using current security scanners.

 

[JSCh]

China exports nuclear fusion heating facility to France

New China TV

Published on Apr 25, 2016
A research team in central China's Anhui Province has produced its first set of ICRF antenna, a crucial auxiliary heating facility for nuclear fusion reactors.

The institute under China's Academy of Sciences delivered the antenna to France's WEST nuclear research team on Monday.

 

[JSCh]

China produces key component for nuclear fusion facility
Updated: Apr 26,2016 8:42 AM Xinhua

Photo taken on April 25, 2016 shows the ion cyclotron resonant heating (ICRH) antenna, a key part of nuclear fusion facility, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences institute of plasma physics (ASIPP) in Hefei, capital of East China’s Anhui province.[Photo/Xinhua]​

HEFEI — A world-class ion cyclotron resonant heating (ICRH) antenna, a key part of nuclear fusion facility, was delivered to a French institute in Anhui province on April 25.

The antenna was manufactured by the Chinese Academy of Sciences institute of plasma physics (ASIPP), and delivered to the Institute for Magnetic Fusion Research (IRFM) under French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA).

The antenna, which has reached French nuclear power standard, will be used to heat plasma for the IRFM Wolfram Environment in Steady-state Tokamak (WEST), said Song Yuntao, deputy director of ASIPP.

The antenna is a collaborative design and a Chinese production, said Gabriele Fioni, director of the department of international relations of CEA.

​

Guests view the ion cyclotron resonant heating (ICRH) antenna, a key part of nuclear fusion facility, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences institute of plasma physics (ASIPP) in Hefei, capital of East China’s Anhui province, April 25, 2016.[Photo/Xinhua]
​

The cooperation on fusion between ASIPP and IRFM began in the 1980s. The two sides signed a contract in 2013 to establish a joint laboratory and will produce two more antennas for the WEST project.

Founded in 1978 in Hefei City, ASIPP has been focused on the research of controlled thermonuclear fusion energy. The institute has mastered advanced technology in high temperature plasma physical experiments and nuclear fusion project, according to institute director Wan Baonian.

Nuclear fusion is considered a clean and safe source of power and is being widely pursued by researchers around the world.

 

[JSCh]

The following is news from april, last year.


IAEA safety review for Chinese small reactor
21 April 2015

China's ACP100 multi-purpose small modular reactor (SMR) design is to undergo a safety review following the recent signing of an agreement between China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

CNNC announced today that it had signed an agreement with the IAEA on 16 April for the IAEA to undertake a Generic Reactor Safety Review (GRSR) of the ACP100.

The GRSR process reviews the completely- or partially-developed safety cases of new reactor designs that are not yet in the licensing stage. It involves an international team of experts evaluating design safety case claims against selected and applicable IAEA safety standards.

The review is scheduled to begin in July and is expected to take seven months to complete, CNNC said. During this time, the IAEA will examine the reactor's safety, prepare environmental analysis reports and look at other aspects of the design, the company said.

The ACP100 is a 'key project' of China's 12th Five-Year Plan. The preliminary design of the reactor was completed in 2014, ready for construction to start in 2015, with operation following in 2017. However, the design still awaits approval from the National Development and Reform Commission.

The design incorporates passive safety features and will be installed underground. Its 310 MWt pressurized water reactor produces about 100 to 150 MWe, and power plants comprising two to eight of these are envisaged, with 60-year design life and 24-month refueling. The reactor can also be used for desalination, as well as industrial and district heat applications. The design could also be used on a floating nuclear power plant.

A demonstration plant featuring two ACP100 reactors is planned for Putian in China's Fujian Province.

CNNC's larger ACP1000 reactor design successfully passed an IAEA generic reactor safety review last December. It was the first Chinese-designed reactor to have undergone review by the IAEA.

Researched and written
by World Nuclear News

***#####***

我自主设计小堆ACP100通过安全审查 小堆发展迎里程碑
China independently designed small reactors ACP100 passed safety review, welcome developmental milestone

发表时间：2016-04-26 08:50 来源：科技日报
Published: 2016-04-26 08:50 Source: Science and Technology Daily​

　　世界小堆发展迎来重要里程碑。记者25日从中核集团获悉，国际原子能机构（IAEA）近日向其提交了ACP100通用反应堆安全审查终版报告， 中核集团自主设计、自主研发的多用途模块化小型反应堆ACP100成为世界首个通过IAEA安全审查的小堆技术。这也是继ACP1000之后，中核集团又 一个通过IAEA反应堆通用设计审查的自主三代核电技术。

我自主设计小堆ACP100通过安全审查 小堆发展迎重要里程碑 -- 最新报道 -- 中国科技网

Translation:

World small reactor development has ushered in an important milestone. Our reporter on the 25th learned from China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has recently submitted to them the final version of ACP100 common reactor safety review report. CNNC independently design, self-developed multi-purpose modular small reactor ACP100 has become the world's first small reactor technology to pass safety review by the IAEA .