Except for the small nuclear power stations constructed around 1970, there has been no deployment of SMRs in Japan. After the severe earthquake on March 11, 2011, followed by the severe accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station, deployment of nuclear power plants has basically been frozen in Japan, including deployment of SMRs in Japan. Since the policy for nuclear energy utilization has been under discussion in Japan after the Fukushima Dai-ichi accident and has not yet been determined, it is difficult to present a perspective for the SMR deployment in Japan at this time (February 2014).

However, the activities for deployment of some Japanese SMR concepts in other countries are continuing. One of them is the 4S (described in Section 19.3.5) deployment activity in Alaska, USA, which is under preliminary review by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The other is the HTR50S (mentioned in Section 19.3.4) deployment activity in Kazakhstan, to be realized in the 2020s.

19.2 Future trends

As mention in the previous section, the Japanese policy for the nuclear energy utilization has been under discussion since the Fukushima Dai-ichi accident. It is difficult to present the likely future trend in Japan. After the Fukushima Dai-ichi accident, safety requirements have become more severe. Some SMR design concepts may need to be changed or checked against the new requirements.

Since the deployment of nuclear power plants is not expected to be easy in Japan, the SMR deployment abroad would be one likely future trend in Japan. In such a situation, there are two possibilities for the SMR deployment. One is the use based on the experienced LWR-based reactor. The other would be the use of new and non-LWR-based reactor. It can be said that the Japanese SMR have the potential to answer both possibilities.

19.3 Sources of further information and advice

A valuable source of further information is the new revision of the IAEA-TECDOC on the SMR status in the world. The revision of the TECDOC has been issued around every five years. The websites of the Japanese vendors of Mitsubishi, Toshiba and Hitachi would be other information sources, using keywords of the SMR and each reactor, such as IMR, CCR, DMS and 4S. The JAEA website is also valuable for the gas-cooled concepts of GTHTR300 and HTR50S. Also, the papers submitted to the international conferences, such as ICONE, ICAPP and ANS topical meeting on the SMR, would be valuable.

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