General Nuclear System Limited is a joint venture company formed of and staffed by two well established companies (CGN and EDF) that construct, own and operate nuclear power stations globally and who, in turn, have a mature safety culture. Combined, these two entities bring a strong nuclear safety culture that focusses on continuous improvement and sustained excellence.
Nuclear power has an excellent safety record in the UK, France, China and the rest of the world. The GDA process is set up to ensure that any new nuclear power stations built in the UK continue to meet high standards of safety and security.
HPR1000 Safety Features
The HPR1000 includes improved design features following the Fukushima disaster review, which includes enhanced safety features to ensure safety at all times, both during normal operation and under a range of potential accident conditions, from minor to extreme events.
We practice something called ‘safety redundancy,’ which means we have multiple systems that allow us to shut the reactors down, so we do not rely on a single system. We have multiple levels of protection that work independently from each other, and some of the key features include:
Safety Injection System
In the case of a loss of coolant accident, the safety injection system can inject borated water into the reactor core to submerge the core and prevent it from being exposed.
In shut down state, it can also help to remove the residual heat from the core.
Emergency Boration System
In the case of an accident, the emergency boronising system boronises the primary circuit safely so as to compensate the change in reactivity caused by cooling the Reactor Coolant System, transferring the power station into a safe shutdown state.
Emergency Water Supply System
In the event of an accident, this system reduces the temperature and pressure in the primary circuit by injecting water into the secondary side of the steam generator.
Secondary Passive Residual Heat Removal System
This system ensures long-term cooling by natural circulation in the event that all active systems are disabled.
In-vessel Retention System (IVR)
In the event of a serious accident, resulting in successive failures and core meltdown, the IVR ensures cooling by using gravity to pump water around the reactor.
These features make up one of the key areas which were considered under the Generic Design Assessment for the UK HPR1000. Further detailed information can be found within the Pre-Construction Safety Report submission in the final submissions documents.
