Research and analysis

Discharges from boiling water reactors: scoping study

Scoping study to assess discharges from existing boiling water reactors as part of a wider design assessment for new nuclear power plants.

• From: Environment Agency
• Published: 16 March 2015

Documents

Discharges from boiling water reactors: report

Ref: ISBN 978-1-84911-349-6, SC130018/R

PDF, 847 KB, 89 pages

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Discharges from boiling water reactors: summary

Ref: SC130018/S

PDF, 55.6 KB, 1 page

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Details

The Environment Agency is required by the Department of Energy and Climate Change to conduct a Generic Design Assessment (GDA) for proposed new nuclear power plants in the United Kingdom (UK). The design currently being proposed for Wylfa on Anglesey and Oldbury in Gloucestershire is the UK Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (UK ABWR) design of Hitachi-GE of Japan.

Part of the GDA process is to consider the potential discharges from the proposed Hitachi-GE UK ABWRs. There are no ABWRs operating in the UK at present, but there are many boiling water reactors (BWRs) operating around the world. BWRs are a predecessor reactor type to ABWRs. Reports of the discharges from such reactors are available in the public domain or on request from regulators or operators. The information on BWR discharges can be used to inform the GDA of the likely discharges from ABWRs and inform the approach to regulating ABWRs.

This project is a scoping study to inform a larger project on BWR discharge assessment. The aim of this project was to identify suitable BWR reactors for study, taking account of the type and age of reactor, location, regulatory regime and operational approaches.

Published 16 March 2015