UK Nuclear Regulators New Reactor Assessment

The nuclear regulators (the Health and Safety Executive and the Environment Agency) have been applying a new process, called 'Generic Design Assessment' or GDA, which allows the safety, security and environmental implications of new power station designs to be assessed before an application is made to build that design at a particular site.

In March 2008, HSE and the Environment Agency completed their initial assessment of four nuclear power station designs:

• Atomic Energy of Canada Limited's (AECL) ACR-1000
• AREVA and Electricité de France's (EDF) UK EPR
• GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy's (GEH) ESBWR
• Westinghouse Electric Company's (WEC) AP1000

The regulators concluded that, after carrying out their initial assessments of these designs, they could see no shortfalls at this stage - in terms of safety, security or the environment - which would prevent any of the designs from ultimately being constructed on a licensed site in the UK.

As part of moves towards greater openness and transparency, the regulators have published a series of reports on the initial assessment of the four designs.

Subsequently, Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd (AECL) announced that the company was withdrawing the ACR 1000 design from the GDA process, to allow the company to focus its marketing and licensing resources on the Canadian Market.

On 12 June 2008, HSE and the Environment Agency announced that they were starting the next, more detailed stage of the GDA process - referred to by HSE as Step 3 - for the remaining three designs.