Westinghouse Welcomes Interim Approval for AP1000® Reactor From UK Regulators

CHORLEY, England, Dec. 14, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Westinghouse Electric Company is delighted that the UK regulators – Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) and Environment Agency (EA) - have today granted Interim Design Acceptance Confirmation (IDAC) and Interim Statement of Design Acceptability (ISoDA) to the company's AP1000® reactor design.

The announcement comes after four and a half years of work as part of the Generic Design Assessment (GDA) process. During this time the regulators have scrutinised all aspects of the design to ensure that it meets UK standards.

Westinghouse Vice President for the UK, Middle East & Egypt, Mike Tynan, said:

"This announcement marks a tremendous milestone on the road towards seeing AP1000 reactors built in the UK. These interim approvals demonstrate clearly that the regulators believe the design will meet UK safety and environmental requirements and, although there remain a number of pieces of work to complete, the remaining activity does not pose a substantial risk to final approvals being granted.

Some of the additional work required to go from Interim to Final approval status has already been carried out, some is currently in progress, and we will embark on the remainder once we have been selected as the preferred reactor design by a UK utility customer.

The fact that we have reached this milestone is a huge credit to the monumental efforts of a large Westinghouse team, on both sides of the Atlantic, under the leadership of our GDA Programme Director Simon Marshall. I am pleased to thank Simon and the whole team for all that they have done to get us to this point. I also pay tribute to our utility partners, who have provided invaluable support and insight to us throughout the GDA process, as well as sharing some of the GDA costs."

Notes to Editors:

Westinghouse Electric Company, a group company of Toshiba Corporation, is the world's pioneering nuclear power company and is a leading supplier of nuclear plant products and technologies to utilities throughout the world.

Westinghouse supplied the world's first PWR in 1957 in Shippingport, Pennsylvania. Today, Westinghouse technology is the basis for approximately half of the world's operating nuclear plants.

The Westinghouse AP1000® reactor is close to final design certification by nuclear regulators in the US, and is one of two designs currently being considered for potential new nuclear build in Britain. Contracts have been placed around the world for a total of ten AP1000 plants to date – 4 in China and 6 in the US. All four Chinese plants are under construction and remain on schedule, with the first plant, at Sanmen in China, on track to produce electricity in 2013.

The major European utilities which have supported the AP1000 UK GDA application are E.On and RWE (who are now teamed in the UK as Horizon Nuclear Power), Iberdrola and GDF Suez (who are now teamed in the UK as NuGeneration), Vattenfall and Endesa.

For more information on Westinghouse, visit:
http://www.westinghousenuclear.com

For more information on the AP1000 reactor, visit:
http://ap1000.westinghousenuclear.com

SOURCE Westinghouse Electric Company