Office for Nuclear Regulation starts assessment of GE Hitachi small modular reactor design

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GE Hitachi was one of six firms shortlisted late last year for government support to deliver a new wave of nuclear reactors, with the shortlist also including Rolls Royce SMR, Holtec Britain, EDF, NuScale Power and Westinghouse Electric Company UK.

SMR designs from Rolls Royce SMR and Holtec Britain, with the aid of Mott MacDonald, are currently undergoing GDA.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero requested that the GDA takes place following the department’s readiness review of GE Hitachi’s application which concluded that the design is ready to enter the GDA process which can take approximately four years.

The government said that the GDA will “look to actively explore opportunities to maximise the value of international regulatory collaboration and identify efficiencies in processes.”

GDA is a voluntary, non-mandatory process which can provide early condifence that a proposed reactor design if capable of being constructed, operated and decommissioned in accordance with the standards of safety, security and environmental protection which are required in Great Britain.

A full GDA is a three step process but vendors can choose to complete just the first two steps if they wish.

The first step is about project mobilisation and agreeing the scope.

The second consists of a fundamental review of safety, security and safeguards by ONR and England and Wales’s respective environmental regulators.

Vendors can choose to stop the GDA process at this stage, or carry on to the third step, which involves a detailed assessment of their submissions.

If the three step GDA is completed, a design acceptance confirmation (DAC) can be issued. This also assumed that the ONR has concluded that the design is “capable of being safely and securely built and operated, subject to future site-specific assessment and licensing.”

A GDA is not a substitute for the nuclear site licensing process but it can help make a significant contribution to any future ONR assessment of the safety case for a new reactor.

The ONR said “Should an organisation seek to construct and operate a reactor in Britain that has not been subject to a three-step GDA, the detailed design assessment would need to be carried out through ONR’s statutory regulatory processes, established through the nuclear site licence, before a permission could be granted to start nuclear safety-related construction.”

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