The European Utility Requirements for Advanced Light Water Reactors (EUR): Recent Achievements and New Challenges

Abstract

Since 1991, the European Utility Requirements (EUR) organisation has been actively developing and promoting harmonised technical specifications for the new mid- and large-size LWR designs to be proposed by the vendors in Europe. The EUR document consists of a comprehensive set of requirements covering the whole Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). It encompasses all aspects (safety, performance, competitiveness) and all parts of a NPP (nuclear island and conventional island). The document can be used by the utilities (guide for design assessment, technical reference for call for bids) and by the vendors, as a technical guide. The harmonisation which is sought after by the EUR aims at delivering the safest and most competitive designs based on common rules shared all over Europe. Fourteen nuclear operators across Europe are members of the organisation. After the publication of the Revision D of the EUR document (October 2012), the EUR organisation has been extremely active. This presentation describes the main results obtained during the last four years and the new challenges for the coming years (roadmap 2016–2018) in the three following fields. First, the revision of the EUR document, in order to maintain it at a state-of-the-art level, remains the highest priority for the organisation. Regarding the new revision E of the EUR document [1], expected to be issued in the 2nd quarter of 2017, the presentation describes the most significant updates implemented in many fields among which: revised safety requirements taking into account the most recent European and international safety standards issued by WENRA and IAEA, the lessons learnt from the Fukushima accident, including re-evaluated seismic and external natural hazards approach and the most recent international standards, for example for Instrumentation and Control (I&C). The assessment of new designs is the second main technical activity of the EUR organisation. The MHI EU-APWR design has been assessed against the revision D between 2012 and 2014. New design assessments are in progress (namely Korean KHNP’s EU-APR and Russian AEP’s VVER TOI) and are planned to be ended in 2017–2018. A new applicant is in the file. The presentation briefly recalls the EUR design assessment objectives and process and the progress of the different assessment projects. The third topic to be covered by the presentation is the interaction between the EUR and the other stakeholders, in particular the other international organisations (ENISS, WNA/CORDEL, WENRA, IAEA, EPRI/URD). The presentation describes how the EUR organisation is connected to these stakeholders and the corresponding cooperation results and future projects.