Oh No: Regulator!

摘要

After some months of anticipation, I was interested to hear from the UK's newly-reformed Office of Nuclear Regulation, still a state enterprise, but now occupying a position outside of central government as a public corporation. Although I confess I still haven't really understood how this change will affect the UK fleet of nuclear power plants, the new ONR does have some interesting items on its plate: there is the restart of the AP1000 design assessment now that Westinghouse has taken a stake in new-build utility consortium NuGen, the design assessment of the Hitachi ABWR, the UK's first BWR, any Hinkley Point C site-specific assessment items, plus the day-to-day regulation of 16 operating reactors and another two dozen undergoing decommissioning, plus lots of other responsibilities.