Early Assessment of Innovative and Advanced Modular Reactor (AMR) Designs - Regulatory Process and Insights from Application to Eight Designs in the UK

In 2019, as part of the Advanced Modular Reactors (AMR) Feasibility and Development (F&D) project sponsored by the UK Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), the UK Office for Nuclear Regulation and the Environment Agency developed and applied a process for early regulatory assessment of innovative (Generation IV) reactor designs. To deliver a measure of the potential for regulatory alignment with UK regulatory expectations to BEIS, the process was applied to seven innovative fission reactors - three high temperature gas reactors, one sodium cooled fast reactor, two lead cooled fast reactors, a molten salt reactor and a fusion reactor. The process comprised assessment on 18 technical discipline areas across nuclear safety, site safety, transport, security, safeguards and environmental protection. The paper presents the process and guidance developed to enable a targeted regulatory submission from vendors, and the stages, timeline and assessment strategies applied through the process. The paper outlines the regulatory themes, criteria and indicators of regulatory confidence developed to guide proportionate regulatory judgements, and the key findings and lessons learnt from applying the process to the above innovative designs.