UK Regulators’ Reactor Report Warns Of Conflicts of Interest
Written by NucNet
Wednesday, 25 August 2010
Possible conflicts of interest involving reactor vendors and contractors are of “increasing significance” in the UK’s assessment of new reactor designs, regulators say in a report published today.
In their latest quarterly progress report on the generic design assessment (GDA) of the Areva-EDF UK EPR (European pressurised water reactor) and Westinghouse AP1000 reactor, the UK’s joint regulators, the Health and Safety Executive and the Environment Agency, say an essential element of the regulators’ assessment is consideration of the technical support work of its sub-contractors.
The work commissioned has increased significantly during the last quarter and up to the end of June 2010 the HSE had placed 110 support contracts with a value of around 12.7 million pounds (19.5 million US dollars, 15.5 million euro).
But today's report says there is “a fairly limited pool” of suitably qualified and experienced technical experts and specialist companies that are capable of undertaking work of this nature.
As worldwide nuclear reactor projects are progressing, companies like Electricité de France (EDF), Areva and Westinghouse are increasingly seeking contractor support from this limited pool of specialist companies.
“Some of these may already be involved in work in support of the HSE and we have to be careful that conflicts of interest do not arise,” the report says, adding “it is a topic that we will continue to monitor actively”.
The report says the GDA has already identified many areas that require more detailed discussion with the reactor vendors, the more significant of which will require new work by them, or changes to the proposed reactor designs. “However, we have not identified any showstoppers at this point,” the report says, and the regulators remain confident that they will complete a meaningful assessment in June 2011.
