It looks likely that we’ll see more nuclear power stations in the UK after the regularly of the nuclear industry announced that it plans to reinitialize the planning process for the construction of Westinghouse’s AP1000 nuclear reactor.

Nuclear engineering firm Westinghouse managed to get its reactor through the first stages of the design process however it failed to secure any orders from any of the three nuclear power projects in the UK.

In January this year it was announced the company bought a 60% share of nuclear power generator NuGen, going on to pledge they’d have their own nuclear reactor up and running at the Cumbrian site in 2024.

The Office for Nuclear Registration said this week that it anticipated it would start looking at the second phase of the generic design assessment of the AP1000 reactor within the next 3 months.

A spokesperson for Westinghouse said the firm was “pleased” at the progress of the assessment. He added: “Once the ONR is remobilized for AP1000 plant assessment, we expect to achieve GDA approval in circa 24 months.”