Guidance

Assessment of candidate nuclear power plant designs

Process for assessing the acceptability of a candidate nuclear power station design.

• From: Environment Agency
• Published: 8 March 2013

Documents

Process and Information Document for Generic Assessment of Candidate Nuclear Power Plant Designs

Ref: LIT 7998

PDF, 869 KB, 33 pages

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Details

The Environment Agency regulates various aspects of nuclear power stations’ operations, mainly under the Environmental Permitting Regulations 2010. Our process for considering new nuclear power stations is split into 2 phases. The first phase addresses generic design matters and the second deals with applications for permits for specific sites.

This document sets out our process for the first phase, assessing the acceptability of a candidate nuclear power station design. We call this process Generic Design Assessment (GDA).

The regulators began a GDA of the UK HPR1000 nuclear power station design in 2017. That GDA is following this 2013 version of the guidance.

In 2019 the regulators modernised the GDA process, using their learning from previous assessments. The Environment Agency published updated guidance in October 2019. The regulators will be using the updated guidance for all future GDAs.

Published 8 March 2013