Assessing new nuclear power station designs
Regulating new nuclear power stations
As regulators of the nuclear industry, we are working with the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) and Environment Agency (EA) to ensure that any new nuclear power stations built in the UK meet high standards of safety, security, environmental protection and waste management.
Assessment of Hitachi-GE’s UK ABWR and our consultation
We started assessing Hitachi-GE’s UK ABWR design in April 2014. As part of this assessment we (Natural Resources Wales and The Environment Agency) consulted on our preliminary conclusions for 12 weeks, from 12 December 2016 to 3 March 2017. We published 11 assessment reports and an independent dose assessment alongside our consultation document, summary and addendum.
Responses to our consultation
In our consultation plan we said we’d publish all the responses made to us on GOV.UK in April. Because of government guidelines about publishing information in the pre-election period we postponed publication of this report until today (25 July, 2017).
This report is a collation of responses received to our consultation via our online e-consultation tool, email, post, national stakeholder event and local events near Wylfa Newydd and Oldbury. It does not contain our response to the points raised by individuals or organisations, as these will be included in our final decision document.
Next steps
We are now carefully considering all the comments raised and targeting December 2017 for our final decision. Our written reply to each response will be included in our final decision document which will also be published on GOV.UK.
Comments process open until 15 August 2017
Any nuclear power station design company going through our assessment is required to set up a website, publish information about the design and invite comments and questions about it.
You can still make a comment or ask a question about the UK ABWR design and Hitachi-GE will respond to you. We’ll see both question and response so we can consider them in our assessments. This process will close on 15 August 2017, around four months before we make our decision.
If you have any questions about this report please email us at gda@environment-agency.gov.uk
Find out more about Horizon Nuclear Power’s plans for the Wylfa and Oldbury site
https://www.horizonnuclearpower.com/our-sites/wylfa-newydd