Canada’s AECL has announced that it has withdrawn its ACR-1000 reactor design from the UK’s Generic Design Assessment (GDA) process.
The move leaves the UK’s regulatory authorities with just three nuclear designs to assess – the Westinghouse AP1000, Areva’s EPR and GE-Hitachi’s ESBWR – and saves them from carrying out a prioritisation process. It will also enable AECL to focus on the needs of the Canadian market.
“The nuclear renaissance has taken hold in Canada as several Canadian provinces are currently considering the ACR as the technology-of-choice for the next generation nuclear technology,” said AECL’s President and Chief Executive Officer Hugh MacDiarmid. “We believe very strongly that our best course of action to ensure the ACR-1000 is successful in the global market place is to focus first and foremost on establishing it here at home.”
The GDA will assess each of the designs in terms of generic safety, security and environmental aspects to determine their suitability for the UK market. The UK government had indicated that only three designs would proceed to the main phase of GDA in order to enable deployment of new nuclear power plants in the country by 2020.
