There is continuing interest in Member States in the developmentand application of small and medium sized reactors (SMRs), i.e., the reactors with an equivalent electric powerof less that 700 MW. In 2006-2007, several distinct ‘families’ of innovative SMRs comprising more than 50innovative concepts and designs have been analyzed or developed by national or international programmesinvolving Argentina, Brazil, China, Croatia, France, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea,Lithuania, Morocco, Russian Federation, South Africa, Turkey, USA, and Vietnam. Innovative SMRs are underdevelopment for all principal reactor lines. The target dates when they could be ready for deployment protrudefrom 2010 to 2030. The designers of innovative small and medium sized reactors pursue new design anddeployment strategies making use of certain advantages provided by smaller reactor size and capacity to achievereduced design complexity and simplified operation and maintenance requirements, and to provide forincremental capacity increase through multiple plant clustering or multi-module plant construction.Competitiveness of SMRs depends on the incorporated strategies to overcome loss of economies of scale butequally it depends on finding appropriate market niches for such reactors. Based on the analysis of the designphilosophies and approaches applied by the designers of innovative SMRs, it is possible to identify top-leveldesign objectives or criteria for such reactors devised to meet the expectations of many categories ofstakeholders.Keywords: Small and Medium Sized Reactors, Design and Deployment Strategies, Economic and InvestmentCharacteristics, Safety, Proliferation Resistance, Operation without On-site Refuelling, Competitiveness,Applications, Design ConsiderationsVladimir KuznetsovInternational Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, AustriaE-mail: v.v.kuznetsov@iaea.org
