Frequently Asked Questions

The EUR Association is an international association governed by the French “1901” Law. The EUR Association was officially created in April 2021, under the reference W691103889.

The EUR Association brings together Members representing companies involved in new nuclear projects or in electricity generation in Europe or outside Europe.

EUR Members commit themselves:

• to dedicate enough resources to contribute to the EUR Association activities;
• to promote and to defend the EUR common positions with their usual stakeholders.

The Members of the EUR Association have endorsed the Statutes of the EUR Association, completed by the EUR Association Charter, regarding the management and the organisation of the EUR Association. 

The organisation is kept decentralized. No permanent project team has been set up. Each participating utility appoints its own representatives for specific EUR tasks that are carried out mainly in the company offices.

• A Steering Committee, that gather executives from each party defines the strategy, gives the green lights to publication, and more generally makes the major decisions.
• An  Administration Group is in charge of the technical reviews of the draft texts and manages the project at detail level.
• Topical Working Groups and Coordination Groups are set up to deal with specific topics or specific parts of the EUR document.
• An EUR Secretariat dispatches the necessary information to the right persons. The whole works with periodic meetings and exchanges on the Internet.

Any applicant for EUR Membership shall send an application letter to the EUR Chairperson to justify its compliance with the pre-determined conditions. Additional information could be requested if needed.

Applicant representatives are then invited to present their company, their motivation and future involvement in EUR activities to the EUR Steering Committee.

If the application is accepted, the final step for becoming a new EUR Member is the endorsement of the EUR Statutes and EUR Charter. 

A Non-European utility may not join the EUR Organisation as a EUR Associate or Full Member, because he cannot fulfil the following rule defined in the EUR Organisation Charter [1], to be an “Experienced power generation Utility in Europe”.

Nevertheless, the EUR Organisation proposes to welcome any Non-European Utility as “EUR Observer Member”, subject to fill-in the three following pre-determined conditions: 

• Experience as a power generator outside Europe with utility responsibilities; 
• Nuclear experience on its own existing plants, or in the development of new nuclear plants within Europe or worldwide; and 
• Sufficient technical skills to contribute effectively to EUR activities.

Any application as Observer Member shall be considered by the EUR Steering Committee based on an application letter from the applicant to be sent to the EUR, justifying its compliance with the 3 pre-determined conditions stated here above. 

The European Utility Requirement document (EUR document) is a nuclear power plant specification written by a group of the potential investors in electricity generation in Europe. The primary objective was to give a common frame to the development of next generation LWR NPPs, so as to allow the emergence of several standardised LWR designs that would be well fitted to the European utility future needs and that could be proposed throughout Europe without any major design change. Other uses have eventually appeared: bid specification and tool for harmonisation of the rules (nuclear safety, connection to HV grid, ...) on the European unified electricity market. The EUR document has been used as a base for the specifications of several call for bids.

There are 2 kinds of EUR products: 

 (1) a set of generic design requirements applicable to any new LWR plants in which the specification is kept functional, thus avoiding, as far as possible, solution-oriented requirements. This set includes 3 Volumes, structured in chapters dedicated to specific topics:

• Volume 1 with introduction, EUR Key Issues and EUR Key Positions on SMLWR,
• Volume 2 dedicated to both the Nuclear Island and generic requirements,
•  Volume 4 dedicated to the power generation plants. 

 (2) design-specific sets for each of the selected designs (volume 3 subsets). Each set includes a plant description, a summary of the assessment of compliance vs. the EUR volumes 1 & 2 and, where necessary, design specific requirements. Volume 3 subsets are not available on the EUR web site.

A LWR nuclear project can be considered as an acceptable candidate to the EUR design assessment when it meets the following conditions:

• Its Vendor intends to be present on the European market and, at least, two “sponsors” and two “supporters” amongst the EUR Members, commit respectively to assess and review the compliance assessment.
• Its level of development is sufficient to allow a detailed assessment of compliance vs. the 5000 requirements of the Volume 2 of the EUR Document.
• The project documentation (Design Description and Self-Assessment) is accessible to the assessment performers (language, conditions of use, specific non-disclosure agreement needed, etc.).
• Sufficient resource is available on the Vendor side as well as on the EUR Association side to develop the corresponding subset of the EUR Document Volume 3.