SMR: review of international projects

Some countries like France, United-Kingdom, Canada or United-States, give an important place to SMR projects in their post Covid-19 economic recovery plans. States, enterprises, universities, or research laboratories are interested in the potential of SMR reactors. More than 50 designs of SMR are studied worldwide, this article gives some examples of this keen interest. The BWRX-300 proposed by GE-Hitachi is a water-cooled 300 MW SMR with passive safety system. The U-Battery SMR is developed conjointly by the university of Manchester (United-Kingdom) and the university of Delft (the Netherlands). NuScale is an American project which has reached the stage of certification of its 60 MW SMR by the NRC. Natrium is a project developed by GE-Hitachi and TerraPower, it is a fast-type SMR. In Europe, Czech republic considers a fleet of SMRs to replace its coal-burning power plants. In the United-Kingdom, Rolls-Royce is studying a 450 MW SMR. Estonia considers entering nuclear power production through the installation of SMRs. (A.C.)