9.1 Licensing status and compliance with the current regulations

The licensing of SMRs will be affected by the Fukushima accident in the same way as for large reactors. Table 9.1 summarises the licensing status of SMRs addressed in the present report (as in 2010).

SMRs available for deployment, which are the CANDU-6, the PHWR-220, the QP-300, the CNNP-600, and the KLT-40S, have passed licensing procedures which is a confirmation of their compliance with the national regulations at the time of their licensing. The CANDU-6 and the QP-300 have been deployed in countries other than the country of origin, which means they have also been licensed in those countries, see Table 9.1.

The EC-6, which is an evolutionary upgrade of the operated CANDU-6, is said to have no regulatory issues and could be licensed as soon as particular deployment projects are defined.

China n/a n/a

United States n/a

United States n/a

United States n/a

Originally planned

United States[74] [75] deployment

abandoned

AHWR India n/a

The NHR-200, which has an operating prototype, the NH-5, is expected to pose no licensing issues in China and will be licensed as soon as particular deployment projects are fixed.

The previous design version of the ABV has been licensed in the Russian Federation, although never built. Its future progress depends on certain design modifications, which would require an additional, although not huge licensing effort.

Different from other designs, for which licensing pre-applications were made in the countries of origin, the designers of the 4S (Japan) submitted a pre-application to the US NRC, see Table 9.1.

No licensing related actions have so far been undertaken for the CAREM-300, IMR, VBER-300, CCR, GTHTR300, SVBR-100 and PASCAR.

All of the advanced SMRs considered in the present report have been designed or are being designed in compliance with the current national regulations. Whether such compliance will be achieved will become clear after the completion of the licensing process. Possible issues that might be faced by certain groups of designs in the licensing process are summarised in the following section.

Another important set of regulatory requirements concern the ability of SMRs to resist nuclear proliferation. All advanced light water PWR SMRs use conventional LEU fuel and most of the PWR SMR designs use the same fuel as large PWRs. However, particular attention should be paid to the non-proliferation potential of some heavy-water or liquid-metal cooled designs, especially if they are intended to be deployed in politically unstable areas. The IAEA has an on-going activity on the options of incorporation of intrinsic proliferation resistance features in NPPs with innovative SMRs, and the report is expected to be published soon.