Regulators’ Report Details Progress On UK Design Assessments For ABWR And AP1000

23 Mar (NucNet): Hitachi-GE has submitted over 90% of its deliverables for the UK Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (UK ABWR) generic design assessment (GDA) with the process on schedule to be completed at the end of 2017, the Office for Nuclear Regulation and the Environment Agency said in a joint update. The regulators said they expect to conclude detailed technical work in the summer and move into drafting reports needed for a decision on whether to grant a design acceptance confirmation and statement of design acceptability for the plant. Hitachi's UK subsidiary Horizon Nuclear Power plans to build two UK ABWRs at the Wylfa Newydd site in north Wales and two more UK ABWRs at Oldbury in western England. The Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales completed a consultation on the environmental impact of the reactor design at the start of March. A quarterly GDA progress report issued by the regulators on 21 March for the period November 2016 to the end of January 2017 also confirmed there has been “a significant increase in pace, progress and delivery” for the Westinghouse AP1000 GDA. This increase in pace and delivery has “dramatically improved” the Westinghouse position and increased the likelihood of the project completing on time at the end of March 2017, the progress report said. The GDA for the AP1000 was originally scheduled to be complete in January 2017, but in July 2016 the ONR extended the review until the end of March 2017 due to what it said at the time was a lack of progress by Westinghouse on control and instrumentation issues. NuGen plans to build three AP1000s at the Moorside nuclear site at Sellafield in northern England. Westinghouse is a subsidiary of Toshiba, but the Japanese company is seeking to sell a majority of its 87% stake in Westinghouse because of an impairment charge of more than $6bn (€5.5bn) that Toshiba was forced to take stemming from a decline in the value of US nuclear construction business Stone & Webster, which Westinghouse acquired in 2015. Westinghouse has said it will no longer undertake international reactor construction work itself, although it will still work under contract on specific projects. Toshiba has said that it will look to sell all or part of its stake in NuGen at the time of the start of construction of the Moorside project.