Westinghouse Electric Co. says that its AP1000 nuclear power plant design successfully completed review by regulators in the United Kingdom. The news comes a day after the company announced plans to reorganize under the protection of a U.S. bankruptcy court.

The regulators finished their Generic Design Assessment (GDA) by issuing Design Acceptance Confirmation (DAC) and Statement of Design Acceptability (SoDA). The DAC and SoDA were issued by the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) and the Environment Agency (EA), respectively.

The UK review is one step in a process to develop the Moorside Project, which envisions three AP1000 units at West Cumbria in North West England.

Westinghouse initiated the GDA process, which applies to England and Wales, in 2007. After receiving Interim Design Acceptance Confirmation (iDAC) and Interim Statement of Design Acceptability (iSoDA) in December 2011, the company paused the review process pending selection of the AP1000 plant technology for a project in the U.K. The GDA resumed in 2014 after NuGen announced plans to build three AP1000 units at the Moorside site.

Westinghouse on March 29 filed voluntary petitions under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, in part due to financial and construction challenges involving its AP1000 program in the U.S. The bankruptcy reorganization is limited to the company's U.S. operations and does not affect its businesses elsewhere in the world.

South Carolina Electric & Gas Co., principal business unit of SCANA, and state-owned Santee Cooper, are building two 1,117-megawatt (MW) nuclear electric-generating units at V.C. Summer Nuclear Station in Fairfield County, S.C.

Southern Company's nuclear business unit is building two 1,117 MW AP1000 units at its Vogtle station in Georgia. The units, numbered 3 and 4, were the first in the U.S. to be licensed for the Westinghouse reactor technology.