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Regulatory issues - new nuclear power stations

As part of our work to assess the nuclear power stations designs currently going through our Generic Design Assessment (GDA) process, we need to ask for more information from the design companies, or tell them if we judge that a particular feature of the design might not meet UK regulatory standards.  The benefit of our GDA is that it allows us to identify these issues early in the design process, where they can more easily be resolved rather than during construction, where a solution may be more complex.

We have systems in place for asking questions and highlighting concerns, which includes raising Regulatory Issues.  We raise Regulatory Issues when we have concerns that are sufficiently important that they may, if not resolved, prevent the successful completion of GDA.  So far, we have raised three Regulatory Issues, two of which have been addressed.

Issue Date raised Date closed
Lack of information Regulatory Issue UKEPR-0001 (EDF/AREVA) [PDF 115KB]PDF 01/02/2008 18/03/2008
Lack of information Regulatory Issue AP1000-0001 (Westinghouse) [PDF 118KB]PDF 01/02/2008 15/02/2008
UK EPR  Control and Instrumentation (C&I) Architecture Regulatory Issue RI-UKEPR-0002 (EDF/AREVA) [PDF 108KB]PDF 16/04/2009  

Regulatory Issues were also raised against GE-Hitachi and AECL on 1 February 2008, both relating to a lack of information, and both of which were subsequently closed.  AECL withdrew from the GDA process in April 2008 and in GE-Hitachi temporarily suspended its participation in the process in September 2008.