AND THEN THERE MIGHT BE THREE....

An announcement from the government may sound the death knell for one of the four proposed nuclear reactor designs currently going through the Generic Design Assessment (GDA), blind date for nuclear power stations one might say. Despite the fact that four designs passed the first stage of the assessment with flying colours mere days ago, the government says it has taken this step to allow the nuclear regulators, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and the Environment Agency (EA), to focus on those designs that are more likely to be licensed and operational in the UK within a 2016-to-2022 timeframe.
The first stage saw the regulators finding “no shortfalls at this stage - in terms of safety, security or the environment - that would prevent any of them from ultimately being constructed on licensed sites in the UK”, meaning all four designs – submitted by EDF/Areva, Westinghouse, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) and a team featuring General Electric and Hitachi Nuclear–could go forward to the next phase.
But with that next phase covering detailed assessment work and likely to take until 2011 to complete, the Department for Business and Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) has started a process to recommend to the regulators which three designs should proceed. By the end of April, BERR have promised a decision which will leave one of the contenders out of the race, out of pocket and seriously nonplussed.