15 Nov (NucNet): Nuclear regulators have completed their initial “high-level” scrutiny of the UK HPR1000 reactor design and have not identified any fundamental safety, security or environmental issues that would prevent it being approved.
The UK’s joint regulators – the Office for Nuclear Regulation and the Environment Agency – said in a statement today that the initial scrutiny was part of their generic design assessment for the China-designed Generation III unit, also known as the Hualong One.
The ONR considered the safety and security of the design and the Environmental Agency considered its environmental acceptability. The review was step two in the sour-step GDA.
China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN) and EDF Energy, through their joint venture company General Nuclear System (GNS), wrote to regulators requesting the GDA process in October 2016. It began in January 2017.
CGN is a majority shareholder in Bradwell Power Generation Company, a joint venture with EDF, which is planning to build a single HPR1000 plant at Bradwell B in Essex, southeast England.
CGN said today that the proposed Bradwell project is in an early pre-planning stage which will involve years of investigative works and public consultations before detailed proposals are produced allowing a planning application to be made.
The UK regulators said GNS – a joint venture company formed by CGN and EDF’s UK division EDF Energy – has worked consistently hard to ensure UK regulatory expectations will be met.
They said there had been “strong commitment” from GNS to learn lessons from the initial steps of the GDA and to improve their working arrangements as the process moves towards the third step.
“There is still a considerable amount of work that will need to be undertaken by GNS, requiring significant resource across all of the topic areas for GNS,” the regulators’ statement said.
The regulators said interaction with EDF and CGN throughout step two had been constructive, but GNS’s role in coordinating these activities has been “challenging”.
“The structure of the organisation is complex, with two very large companies, EDF and CGN, from different regulatory backgrounds cooperating in a new, technically challenging endeavour.”
