Westinghouse Electric Company today announced that U.K. regulators and the company have begun the closeout phase of the Generic Design Assessment (GDA) of the AP1000® nuclear power plant, with a review timeline that supports milestones for developing the three-unit Moorside project in northwest England.
The U.K. regulators – the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) and the Environment Agency (EA) – granted interim GDA approval of Westinghouse’s AP1000 reactor design in December 2011. The GDA process was paused at that stage, pending the selection of the AP1000 plant technology for a project in the U.K. That selection occurred last year when NuGeneration Limited (NuGen) announced plans to build three AP1000 units on the West Cumbrian coast.
“The decision by the ONR and EA to advance the AP1000 plant review to the closeout phase is a very positive development for the Moorside project,” said Jeff Benjamin, Westinghouse senior vice president, New Plants and Major Projects. “We’ve cleared an important hurdle in our efforts to bring a new generation of safe, clean, reliable electricity to serve the U.K.’s energy needs.
“We look forward to successfully completing the GDA review and moving ahead with the Moorside project, learning from and building on our delivery experience from the eight AP1000 units currently under construction in the United States and China,” Mr. Benjamin said.
In this next stage in the GDA process, Westinghouse will provide regulators with detailed technical information to address the remaining open issues in their assessment of the AP1000 plant design. Successful resolution of the open items will result in the granting of a Design Acceptance Confirmation (DAC) and Statement of Design Acceptability (SoDA). The target completion is January 2017.
The first Moorside unit is scheduled to come online in 2024; when fully operational, the three AP1000 units will deliver about seven percent of the U.K.’s future electricity requirements.
The project is another sign of progress in the growth of the global AP1000 plant fleet. In addition to the eight units being built in the United States and China, a shareholder agreement was signed in 2014 to develop an AP1000 plant at the Kozloduy site in Bulgaria. Additional units are also being considered by customers in other markets worldwide.
Westinghouse Electric Company, a group company of Toshiba Corporation (TKY:6502), is the world´s pioneering nuclear energy company and is a leading supplier of nuclear plant products and technologies to utilities throughout the world. Westinghouse supplied the world’s first pressurized water reactor in 1957 in Shippingport, Pa. Today, Westinghouse technology is the basis for approximately one-half of the world’s operating nuclear plants. AP1000 is a trademark of Westinghouse Electric Company LLC. All rights reserved.
