DISCOVER EASI-SMR
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.
IMPACTS
Enhanced safety assessment of passive systems
The results of the experimental test program will improve our knowledge and physical understanding of the phenomena involved in various passive systems such as safety condensers, natural convection in large pools, gravity accumulators and thermosiphon loops. Benchmarking 10 thermal-hydraulic safety codes used in Europe on these experiments will enable us to assess the ability of these codes to represent the physics involved in passive systems, and to draw up a guide to code development requirements for validating safety codes for licensing. Finally, work on adapting reliability assessment methodologies for passive systems will enable us to characterize the reliability of passive systems for safety studies.
Improved regulatory approval for nuclear components fabricated by additive manufacturing techniques.
The two additive manufacturing techniques L-PBF and DED-LB/Mp will be qualified and validated for Alloy 800 and Inconel 625 according to a test matrix including tensile, mechanical, corrosion and thermal ageing tests. A big mock-up (1 to 2m) of a tube-type SG design with tube sheet will be fabricated with Inconel 625 and DED-LB/Mp methodology, focusing on the tube plates area. Other small mockups representative of advances SG designs (compact SG with narrow channels) will be fabricated by L-PBF with Inconel 625 and alloy 800. Mock-ups will be produced, and destructive and non-destructive characterization will be performed. A methodology report on elaboration of a guidelines for pre-qualification of AM heat exchanger will then be prepared based on the experimental results. These activities will feed into ASME and AFCEN committees
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Advanced methods and tools for LW-SMR boron free core analysis
Static, depletion and transient analysis will be carried out on two boron-free SMR cores (PRATIC and LDR-50-lite). The results of the High fidelity neutronic computational tools will serve as a reference to validate the industrial tools that can be used for safety studies. This work will provide a comprehensive characterization of boron-free cores and support the safety assessment of SMR cores with validated methods and industrial tools for the analysis of LW-SMR cores.
Improved understanding of Human & Organisational factors at stake in LW-SMRs operation
The effect of the passive safety system in the LW-SMR and the operation of multiple units in the same control room will be characterized using human behavior data from simulator tests. Socio-technical analysis of the potential SMR supply chain will identify potential safety issues in LW-SMR supply chain configurations. Guidelines for effective and safe maintenance of SMRs will be provided and, finally, the behavior of SMR operators in the event of a cybersecurity attack will be evaluated through experiments on the IFE simulator and the cybersecurity center. All these studies will contribute to a better understanding of the human and organizational factors at play in the operation of LW-SMRs, and to improving the robustness of procedures and organizations.
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Support a shared and coherent approach among regulators regarding safety requirements for LW-SMRs
A synthesis of various initiatives (HARMONISE project, the EU SMR pre-Partnership program, the ELSMOR project, the Nuclear Harmonization and Standardization Initiative and the SMR Regulators Forum) and exchanges with regulators interested in SMR deployment (Finland, France, UK, Poland...) will enable us to suggest appropriate solutions to some of the challenges facing a mutual licensing approach by different regulators while maintaining their independence. This explicit description of requirements (manual) will ensure transparency between the regulator and the licensee, helping to streamline the various stages of deployment (e.g. construction, operation, etc.).
Better understanding and acceptance of LW-SMRs in the EU
The project's various activities on SMR acceptability will help to improve public acceptance of this new technology and thus promote its rapid deployment in Europe. These activities are as follows:
- Ensuring waste management system are compatible with LW-SMR
- Creating manuals for stakeholder engagement, to help vendor and utilities with them interaction with the local communities.
- Clarify the co-location problematic by determining the size of Emergency Planning Zone (EPZ) using calculations.
- Carry out safety calculation of SMRs integrated into the hybrid energy system.
- Performing safety and security analysis on Ukrainian war to search for lessons on improving the resilience of LW-SMR.