12 Dec (NucNet): The Areva group has formally submitted it design for the US Evolutionary Power Reactor (US EPR) for certification by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
Areva said on 11 December 2007 that the application was ahead of schedule and “supports the certainty of 2015 completion for the first EPR to be deployed in the USA”.
The NRC was told in March 2005 that Areva intended to apply for design certification for an American version of the European Pressurised Water Reactor (EPR) by the end of 2007. The application is the first step in obtaining approval from the NRC for a nuclear plant design to be built.
Areva said its US application comprises some 12,000 pages of documentation prepared by a project team of 325 engineers and 55 support staff.
The EPR has already entered the pre-licensing phase in the UK and Areva said the US move is its fourth licensing process for EPR reactor technology worldwide. Areva said the fifth licensing process will be in China, where a contract for two EPRs was signed last month.
In September 2005, US utility Constellation Energy and Areva Inc said they had formed a joint enterprise – UniStar Nuclear – to market the 1,600-megawatt US EPR in the US.
