THE British Government has asked nuclear regulators to start the process for approving a Chinese-designed reactor for a proposed plant in Britain, expected to be one of the first new plants in decades.

    General Nuclear Services (GNS), an industrial partnership between French utility EDF and China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN), hopes to use the design at a new nuclear station planned to be built in Bradwell, Essex.

    CGN intends to make a number of investments in Britain’s nuclear power sector, most notably the new Hinkley Point C project in southwest England which was approved by the government last September.

    “I have today asked the United Kingdom’s independent nuclear regulators, the Office for Nuclear Regulation, and the Environment Agency, to begin a Generic Design Assessment (GDA) of the UK HPR1000 reactor,” said Jesse Norman, junior minister at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

    A GDA is the formal process for approving a new nuclear reactor and typically takes around four years.

    The Bradwell project is in an early pre-planning stage which will involve years of investigative works and public consultations before proposals can be produced for a planning application, EDF said in a statement.(SD-Agencies)