GovWire

The Environment Agency, the Office for Nuclear Regulation and Natural Resources Wales (the regulators) have an assessment process which enables them to scrutinise new nuclear power station designs before they are built in the UK. This process is called Generic Design Assessment (GDA). It means they can identify any potential design or technical issues early and ask the reactor designer to address them.

Rolls-Royce SMR Ltd applied to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy for its Rolls-Royce 470 MWe Small Modular Reactor (SMR) design to enter into the GDA process.

The application was successful and the regulators were asked by the Minister to begin a GDA for this design. Step 1 of the GDA formally began on 3 April 2022.

The regulators completed Step 1 of the GDA and issued a joint Step 1 statement of findings on the Rolls Royce SMR design. This statement is published here, along with a report of the findings and a public summary of the report. A bilingual version of the report is published on NRWs website . ONRs reports are published on thejoint GDA webpages.

Any nuclear power station design company going throughGDAis required to set up a website, publish information about the design and invite comments and questions about it from the public. You can make a comment or ask a question and the design company will respond to you. The regulators will see the comments and questions submitted and the responses provided and can use these to help inform their work. Make a comment on theRolls Royce SMR website.

The GDA process is described in the GDA guidance for Requesting Parties.

Contact us with any questions about these reports, email: nuclear@environment-agency.gov.uk.