The Environment Agency (EA) is inviting views on a
new nuclear power station design as it publishes its
assessment so far of the UK Hualong Pressurised water
Reactor (UK HPR1000).
The UK HPR1000 is based on the Hualong one power plant,
which is designed by China General Nuclear Group.
Alongside the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), the EA
assesses the acceptability of new nuclear power station
designs in a process called Generic
Design Assessment (GDA). This process helps ensure that
any new nuclear power stations built in the UK meet high
standards of safety, security, environmental protection and
waste management. It also helps avoid potential costly and
time consuming changes for regulatory reasons during
construction.
General Nuclear System Limited, acting for China General
Nuclear Group and EDF SA, began submitting the UK HPR1000
design to both the EA and ONR for GDA in September 2017.
This followed a request from the government to regulators
to begin a GDA of the design.
Bradwell Power Generation Company Limited, a joint
subsidiary of China General Nuclear Group and EDF, is
proposing to construct and operate a nuclear power station
using twin UK HPR1000s at its site near the existing Magnox
power station site at Bradwell in Essex.
The company would need to obtain all relevant permissions
before the development could proceed.
The Environment Agency has found that many of the
environmental aspects of the design would be acceptable,
but has also set out six potential issues to be addressed
before it would consider issuing a full statement of design
acceptability for the UK HPR1000.
Alan McGoff, New Reactors Programme Manager at the
Environment Agency, said:
We have been scrutinising this design since 2017 and have
identified six potential issues and 40 assessment
findings. We expect that General Nuclear System Limited
will continue to work to resolve them over the next year
or so of the GDA process.
Our consultation sets out our findings so far, including
the potential issues to be resolved. We’ll be carefully
considering all of the consultation responses we receive
and can use these to help inform our assessments.
Only if we are satisfied that all the issues have been
addressed would we consider issuing a full statement of
design acceptability. If the issues are not resolved or
new issues are identified but not resolved, then we would
consider only issuing an interim statement of design
acceptability. Our aim is to complete our detailed
assessment of the design in early 2022.
The potential GDA issues identified by the Agency include
how operational experience is used to inform and improve
the design, ensuring coordination of response to safety and
environment protection assessments, optimisation of design
of high efficiency particulate air filters and confirming
that higher activity radioactive wastes created during
operation and decommissioning will be capable of being
disposed of.
The consultation is now live on
gov.uk and will run until Sunday 4 April 2021.
