EASI-SMR Project
DESCRIPTION of the Project
The energy transition and industries decarbonation drived in Europe by The European Green Deal, Fit for 55 policy package, and REPowerEU offer huge potential market opportunities that attract many players outside and inside the European Union who are active in bringing SMRs technologies to reality in Europe.
In that context, the European SMR pre-Partnership worked in 2022-2023 on different workstreams, including an R&D&I program consistent with the European market needs and the licensing requirements. The aim was to ensure the implementation of the highest nuclear safety standards in Europe and secure a best-in-class position for European industry and R&D organizations within the international competition. This European initiative has now become the European Industrial Alliance on SMRs.
The EASI-SMR work program is largely inspired by the European SMR pre-Partnership R&D roadmap, with a particular focus on passive systems. The four-year project will address the safety issues associated with major LW-SMR innovations:
- Passive safety systems
- Soluble boron-free cores
- Co-generation and hybridization
- Additive manufacturing to improve the compactness of modularization of Nuclear Steam Supply System internals
- Multi-unit operation
The work aims to provide insights and facilitate licensing for European LW-SMR industrial projects.
Objectives
Ensure the highest level of the safety of LW SMRs based on passive systems
The safety assessment of passive systems relies on calculations codes that must be qualified with a strong experimental basis.
An important experimental program using 9 test facilities in Europe will be performed to investigate key physical phenomena in passive safety systems under both design basis and beyond design basis conditions, providing essential insights for LW-SMR safety demonstration.
The capability of European-developed Thermohydraulic codes to simulate DBA and BDBA scenarios will be assessed for the different experimental tests, alongside the identification of best practices for passive system modeling and areas for code development.
Finally, these assessed codes will be used to adapt the reliability assessment methodologies (probabilistic and deterministic) for passive systems, focusing on risk analysis and licensing readiness.
Assess the safety impact of LW-SMRs designs’ specificities
The EASI-SMR project will study the impact of various LW-SMR design innovations on reactor safety.
The multi-unit operation of certain designs, as well as compactness and modularization constraints, may have an impact on human and organization factors (control room, supply-chain, maintenance, cyber security), and will be studied analytically and by simulator tests.
The L-PBF and DED-LB additive manufacturing methodologies will be studied by building and characterizing mock-ups.
Finally, high fidelity Monte Carlo simulation of static and depleted boron free cores will be performed to validate industry-like tools for licensing safety studies.
Address regulatory and societal challenges towards the deployment of SMRs in Europe
The project will facilitate licensing and improve the acceptability of LW-SMR by working on providing guideline on harmonized licencing, ensuring waste management system compatibility with large LW reactors, creating manuals for stakeholder engagement, clarifying the co-location problematic and EPZ, integrating LW-SMRs in the Hybrid energy systems and performing safety and security analysis on Ukrainian war.
Learn more: https://easi-smr.eu/
