ICONE19-43480 THE LICENSING PROCESSES INFLUENCE ON NUCLEAR MARKET

Abstract

The paper deals with the licensing nuclear power plants; it focuses primarily on the licensing process implications into the international nuclear market. Nowadays there are twenty-six countries that are planning to build new nuclear facilities, and thirty-seven where nuclear reactors are proposed; on the other hand, there are mainly ten international reactor vendors. At international level, there are few vendors that have sufficient resources, capabilities and experience to carry out the design and delivering of a nuclear power plant in the international market; On the other hand, the licensing processes are strictly dependent on national law frameworks, and on the nuclear policies. The paper proposes a comparison of six licensing processes (the ones established in Finland, France, Italy, South Korea, USA and UK), and analyzes its main features and implications; the IAEA licensing process is taken as reference point. The objective of the paper is to propose a systemic approach for considering the licensing procedures. The framework proposed enables facilitating the licensing management and inferring the main features of licensing contexts. The paper concludes with a forecast of the nuclear licensing context, especially with respect to the fourth generation of nuclear reactors.