ELSMOR – towards European Licensing of Small Modular Reactors: Methodology recommendations for light-water small modular reactors safety assessment
Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: Decarbonization of energy production is key in today’s societies and nuclear energy holds an essential place in this prospect. Besides heavy-duty electricity production, other industrial and communal needs could be served by integrating novel nuclear energy production systems, among which are low-power nuclear devices, like small modular reactors (SMRs). The ELSMOR (towards European Licensing of Small Modular Reactors) European project addresses this topic as an answer to the Horizon 2020 Euratom NFRP-2018-3 call. The consortium includes 15 partners from eight European countries, involving research institutes, major European nuclear companies and technical support organizations. The 3.5-year project, launched in September 2019, investigates selected safety features of light-water (LW) SMRs with focus on licensing aspects. Providing a comprehensive compliance framework that regulators can adopt and operate, the licensing process of such SMRs could be optimized, helping their deployment. In this prospect, as a result of ELSMOR’s work, this article gives an overview of the specific issues that LW-SMRs may bring about in the different domains of nuclear safety, in terms of: • Methodological standpoints: safety goals, safety requirements, safety principles (defence-in-depth implementation); • Main safety functions of reactivity control, decay heat removal and confinement management; • Severe accident management; • Other safety issues particular to SMRs: use of shared systems; performing of multi-unit probabilistic safety assessment (PSA); refuelling, spent fuel management, transport and disposal management. In this article, adequate methodologies are developed to deal with these issues and to help assess the safety of LW-SMRs. This work gives a precious synthesis of the safety assessment issues of LW-SMRs and of the associated methodologies developed in the context of the ELSMOR European project.
Source: Open Research Europe
Authors: Sylvain Lansou, Luca Ammirabile, Nikolai Bakouta, Jeremy Bittan, Sebastian Buchholz, Jean-Yves Brandelet, Etienne Courtin, Frans Davelaar, Stanislav Dombrovsky, Jean-Baptiste Droin, Sophie Ehster-Vignoud, Houda Hamama, Atte Helminen, Thorsten Hollands, Andriy Iskra, Sebastien Israel, Stefano Lorenzi, Liviusz Lovasz, Valerie Paulus, Isabelle Pichancourt, Joachim Miss, Thuy Nguyen, Antti Rantakaulio, Federico Rocchi, Juan-Carlos de-la-Rosa-Blul, Marco Ricotti, Armin Seubert, Oleksandr Sevbo, Stanislav Sholomitsky, Olli Suurnäkki, Marton Szogradi, Ville Tulkki, Andreas Wielenberg
Institutions: Framatome (France), European Commission, Joint Research Center, Directorate-General Joint Research Centre, Électricité de France (France), Gesellschaft für Anlagen und Reaktorsicherheit, Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire, Consorzio Interuniversitario per la Ricerca Tecnologica Nucleare, Fortum (Finland), Sapienza University of Rome, National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development
Language: English
Subfield: Aerospace Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $841
Award: G5019461143
OpenAlex ID: W4386935486