To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform whether any proposed designs for new nuclear power stations have been received by his Department for generic design assessment. (162999)

The consultation document “The Future of Nuclear Power”, published on 23 May 2007 invited vendors of nuclear reactor designs who are interested in having their designs assessed through the Generic Design Assessment process to write to the regulators’ Joint Programme Office by 22 June 2007.

By this date, the regulators had received four applications for Generic Design Assessment.

Following assessment of the applications by the Government, all four were found to have met the criteria set down in the consultation document and as a result, the regulators (the Health and Safety Executive and the Environment Agency) agreed to assess all four designs in the initial stage of the generic design assessment process. A press notice setting out the outcome of the Government’s assessment of applications was released on 5 July 2007. This, along with the letters of application sent by the vendors, and their letters of endorsement from operators, can be found on the BERR website.