In a position paper published on Thursday 5 March, the Renew Europe group makes recommendations to ensure that Europe remains “at the forefront” of the development of SMRs (small modular reactors) and offers an attractive regulatory and financing environment for SMR and AMR (advanced modular reactor) developers.
These are small fission nuclear reactors, generally with a power output of less than 300 MWe, which have the advantage of decentralising electricity production and meeting local needs.
Aware that it could fall behind the United States and China, the EU has already put forward a series of initiatives in recent years, such as the European Commission’s launch of the European Industrial Alliance on SMRs in early 2024.
These efforts, which are necessary but “not sufficient”, according to Renew Europe, need to be complemented by a real SMR and AMR deployment strategy (....), “laying the ground for an EU SMR-AMR policy package”.
European pre-licensing certification. At the heart of this strategy, the group would like to see “an optional European SMR pre-licensing certification” for developers, covering both safety and security and based on protection features at the design stage.
“More concretely, if a design is pre-licensed at the European level, Members States could either approve the design “as is” or add proportionate country-specific requirements”, the document explains.
It also supports the development of an ‘SMR Act’ to provide a specific regulatory framework for SMRs, by amending certain provisions of the Euratom directives.
Among other things, Renew Europe is calling on the Commission to consider the eligibility of SMRs when reviewing the EU taxonomy in 2026, and to include them in the lists of technologies eligible for EIB support.
Focus on ‘Made in Europe’. Renew Europe also stresses that the EU’s SMR strategy should focus on European technologies, intellectual property and value creation.
“Massive imports of non-European designs would undermine European sovereignty and deliver no long-term industrial benefit”, the group maintains.
It believes that the recent energy agreement between the EU and the United States, which provides for €300 billion for the US nuclear industry, is “a wake-up call”.
The document mentions, in particular, the US Phoenix Fund, which is already financing feasibility studies in several Member States with a view to deploying US small modular reactors, “something Europe does not yet offer to its own industry”.
To see the document: https://aeur.eu/f/l1g (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)