Abstract:
The internationally accepted nuclear regulation policy is for each country to
undertake first principle analysis and approvals for the technical design and
operating rules, benchmarking against nationally determined regulations and
standards that are aligned to the IAEA standards. This is largely due to the
acceptance that the liability of any risk emanating from the operation of a nuclear
power plant is the strict liability of the licensed operating company locally. This
approach results in a very large national technical regulator with expensive foreign
support along with a very large in-house engineering team in the licensee. While this
is economically credible in a technically advanced country with an existing nuclear
fleet (such as Canada) it is an extreme overhead on a African country considering the
deployment of a limited number of SMRs. The paper discusses how it may be
possible to create a pan-African regulation option for SMRs, possibly based on the
African Union.
