Engineering news
The two nuclear reactor designs proposed for use in Britain have passed a significant milestone on the road to acceptance but issues remain which Areva and Westinghouse must address.
The Office for Nuclear Regulation and the Environment Agency said this week that the reactors – Areva's EPR and Westinghouse's AP1000 – had been granted “interim acceptance” as part of the generic design assessment.
Although both companies must resolve some outstanding issues about the respective designs, the Environment Agency said it was “satisfied” that the designers would do so. “Neither reactor can be built in the UK until these issues are resolved,” it said.
The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) and the Environment Agency have been considering the safety, security and environmental performance of the two designs, wading through “many thousands” of documents. Kevin Allars, ONR director for nuclear new build, said: “All remaining issues are resolvable.”
Allars said the interim design acceptance of both the AP1000 and the EPR “signals we are prepared to move forward”. The regulators had learned from the experiences of regulatory bodies overseas where Areva is constructing its EPR in France and Finland and Westinghouse its AP1000 in China.
Ian Parker, nuclear regulation group manager at the Environment Agency, said that the process had been “extremely useful”. “We talk to the other regulators regularly.”
The agency and the ONR said they had published documents explaining how the designers plan to resolve issues identified in a report on the Fukushima accident written by the UK's chief inspector of nuclear installations, Mike Weightman.
EDF Energy and Areva said they were “pleased by the decisions by the Office for Nuclear Regulation to issue an interim design acceptance confirmation, and the Environment Agency to issue an interim statement of design acceptability for the EPR pressurised water reactor”.
The companies welcomed the ONR’s conclusion that “we are largely satisfied with the design and safety cases”. They said: “A major milestone has been achieved in that we have reached the end of our planned assessment.”
Areva said: “All areas requiring final resolution have been identified and detailed plans to address them to the satisfaction of the regulators have been agreed. Additionally, the companies have agreed a dedicated resolution plan for new issues that have been identified as a result of the events at Fukushima.”
The generic design assessment is a four-year programme covering 17 technical areas from civil engineering to reactor chemistry. It costs in the region of £25 million a design, paid for by the reactor design companies.
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