The 2007 Energy White Paper ‘Meeting the Energy Challenge’, follows on from the Government’s Energy Review, published in July 2006. In its contribution to the earlier review, HSE prepared an expert report on the potential risks to health and safety that might arise from the energy options being considered by the Government, including nuclear power. HSE’s report considered how it would go about the appraisal of new nuclear reactor designs, in advance of any site-specific proposals to build a nuclear power station.
In summary, HSE proposed that new nuclear power stations could be subject to a more methodical, better defined, multi stage assessment and licensing process, including an assessment process for generic designs.
The 2006 Energy Review concluded that nuclear power will have a role in the future UK generating mix, and proposed a number of initiatives to reduce the regulatory barriers for new nuclear build. In addition, the Government asked HSE and the other principal nuclear regulators (the Environment Agency, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, and the Office for Civil Nuclear Security, OCNS – which has been part of HSE since April 2007) to implement a ‘pre-authorisation’ system for reactor designs to allow generic designs to be assessed in advance of any application to build a nuclear power station at a particular location.
Since July 2006, the nuclear regulators have worked closely to develop proposals and in January 2007, a suite of guidance material on the generic design assessment of new nuclear power station designs was published.