There has been some program “slippage” in a number of topic areas for the generic design acceptance (GDA) of the Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear reactor design, the UK’s Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) said in its latest quarterly report on GDAs issued yesterday. Westinghouse is working to “re-baseline the overall program”, ONR said, “with the objective of enabling regulators to make decisions” about issuing a Design Acceptance Confirmation (DAC) and Statement of Design Acceptance Confirmation (SoDA) in January 2017, as per the current schedule. The report provides information on the work that ONR has been carrying out on the GDA of Hitachi-GE’s UK Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (UK ABWR), and the closure phase of the GDA project for the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor design, during the period July to October 2015. The period of the report was extended to include the end of ONR’s Step 3 for the UK ABWR project. During the reporting period, ONR completed its assessment of Hitachi-GE’s submissions for GDA Step 3 of the UK ABWR project. As part of its governance, ONR undertook a “gateway review” to consider the regulators’ and Hitachi-GE’s readiness to move to Step 4. The review concluded that sufficient progress had been made by Hitachi-GE, and that the regulators had the resources available to progress to Step 4, which commenced on 2 November. The Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales are continuing on Step 3 (detailed assessment) of their GDA process for the UK ABWR. This has a longer duration than ONR’s Step 3 and concludes when the environmental regulators begin consulting on their preliminary findings at the end of that step.
World Nuclear News 8th Jan 2016 read more »