Left:
Some SMR designs will be transported without fuel and so can rely on existing and licensed transportation flasks
Progress on regulatory frameworks Although many issues remain outstanding to develop the right regulatory frameworks that will be appropriate for all the various SMR designs, progress is clearly being made. Chaplin explains: “Within the international Atomic Energy Agency they are beginning to look at all the regulatory environments. Similarly, in the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), because there are similar issues but also additional ones with transporting a nuclear power plant at sea, there aren’t really the rules in place for doing that.”
WNTI have been invited by the IAEA to participate in working groups for transportable nuclear power plants, for example while another working group is being established specifically for floating nuclear power plants to help guide member states as they develop the regulations. “They do see the importance of industry being involved in these discussions and not just safety, security and safeguards. They realise that they can’t just have the member states sit around the table and start coming up with what’s good, they need to have industry input just so that they can be certain the regulations and the recommendations that they come up with actually work,” says Chaplin. Considering the IMO rules, fundamental changes will be needed to accommodate SMRs. “At the moment, it looks like one potential solution is to revise the rules within the safety of life at sea convention and specifically chapter eight, which is the code of safety for nuclear-powered merchant ships. That could be revised to encompass floating nuclear power stations as well. A floating nuclear power station has got to be towed somewhere by sea so there will be maritime regulations that will apply to it. At the moment, that regulation was drafted in the 1960s and was released in 1981. It’s hopelessly out of date given it was written at a time when they were only concerned with nuclear-powered merchant vessels which never really took off other than in the Russian Federation and formerly the Soviet Union,” says Chaplin.
Indeed, WNTI is currently conducting an analysis to
explore what changes would be needed to those regulations to bring them up to date so that they can encompass not
just nuclear-powered vessels, but also floating nuclear power plants and more specifically those that use new technologies like molten salt reactors alongside the more conventional pressurized water reactors. Aside from floating reactors, the shipping of reactors that are designed for terrestrial applications would potentially fall within those same rules or may come under one of the other regulations that cover cargo. Similarly, carrying a fuelled reactor as cargo might come under the International Maritime Dangerous Goods Code (IMDG) or the Irradiated Nuclear Fuels (INF) code, which are the regulations that apply when transporting irradiated fuel plutonium and high-level waste at sea. Those regulations could be expanded to encompass reactors with fuel on board, whether it be for deployment or under the circumstances where it’s being returned with spent fuel on board. Nonetheless, this is a work in progress, as Chapin notes: “At the moment, it’s not been done and no one has shipped a reactor with fuel in it as a cargo. The only time they have been moved at sea they are part of the conveyance so that will be completely new. None of this is actually in place, and the same applies to the packaging and all the other elements that will need to be in place.” He notes that additional investment is needed in R&D so
that drop tests can be conducted on the flasks and process like that will be ramped up as part of this drive to get SMRs built, shipped and deployed. Chaplin continues: “For molten salt reactors reactors,
heat pipe technology or those that will use HALEU fuel, for example, we need to get regulations in place and that can be a frustrating and very slow process where consensus is needed.” However, overall Chaplin is optimistic. He concludes: “SMRs are such a broad and diverse church, but they are coming at a great pace and we are a lot further along than I thought we would have been in just five years. It feels like it’s a monumental task but, like a snowball rolling downhill, it seems to be gathering pace. As more people understand the need for this and also the challenges, I think the faster it will be. There has been talk of deployment of some SMRs using molten salt reactors in the early 2030s. I wouldn’t like to say it’s not going to happen. I think that it’s easily achievable as long as momentum stays there.” ■
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