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 addressed, prevent the successful completion of GDA. So far, we have raised four Regulatory Issues, three of which have been addressed.
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.
For more resources see regulatory issues documents.
Designs for potential new nuclear power stations - MISC790