The Preparedness of Great Britain's Legal Safety Framework for Offshore Floating Nuclear Power Plants

摘要

An offshore floating nuclear power plant (FNPP) is a floating offshore installation equipped with a nuclear power plant (NPP) which serves to provide electricity primarily to a nearby oil/gas producing offshore installation but may also power a drilling rig. This paper discusses the preparedness of Great Britain's legal safety framework for FNPPs to be operated offshore within its external waters. The preparedness is determined in three steps: 1. assessing the suitability of applying the existing legal safety framework for land-based NPPs to a FNPP; assessing the suitability of applying the existing legal safety framework for offshore installations to a FNPP; and 2. identifying factors which, due to the unique nature of an offshore FNPP, have not been considered by either of the existing legal safety frameworks for land-based NPPs or for offshore installations.