European SMR Pre-Partnership holds stakeholder forum
On 26 October 2023, the European SMR Pre-Partnership (ESMRPP) organised a stakeholder forum in Brussels, Belgium. The goal of this forum was to inform stakeholders of the progress made in relation to the ESMRPP and to obtain further feedback on the outcomes of the pre-partnership from stakeholders who were not directly involved in the workstreams, such as policy-makers, NGOs, other EU industry representatives, etc. During this event, hosted by the European Commission, nucleareurope Director General and Chair of the ESMRPP Steering Committee, Yves Desbazeille, provided an overview of the partnership going forward, including the creation an EU SMR Industrial Alliance. Such an alliance would focus on key topics of relevance to the deployment of SMRs including market incentivisation, financing, industry preparedness and innovation. In addition, nucleareurope Legal Affairs Advisor Quentin Heilmann provided an overview of Work Stream 3 which focuses on financing aspects.
Furthermore, stakeholders discussed some of the main challenges identified during the pre-partnership, including:
- Establishment of schemes for the development of cost and risk sharing, up to the successful deployment of the first units.
- Collaboration among regulators of those countries which will host this series of identical SMRs and the way to perform their safety assessments through enhanced inter-regulator exchanges, while maintaining their full sovereign responsibilities.
- Capacity of the supply chain to deal with the increased manufacturing and construction workload among several European providers with homogeneous industrial practices.
- Capacity of R&D to address the knowledge gaps (depending on the technology) and to provide elements for the safety demonstration and performance of SMRs.
Click here to view the full event programme.