To assure the safety of nuclear installations in the UK, ONR works on a system of regulatory control, based on a robust licensing process by which a corporate body is granted a licence to use a site for specified activities.
ONR grants nuclear site licences on behalf of HSE. The nuclear site licence is a legal document, issued for the full life of the facility. It contains site-specific information, such as the licensee’s address and the location of the site, and defines the number and type of installations permitted. Such installations include nuclear power stations, research reactors, nuclear fuel manufacturing and reprocessing, and the storage of radioactive matter in bulk.
A set of 36 Standard Conditions, covering design, construction, operation and decommissioning, is also attached to each licence. These conditions require licensees to implement adequate arrangements to ensure compliance.
A consultation was held between 12 May – 30 June 2011 and ONR wrote to all nuclear site licence holders to consult them on possible amendments.
ONR received 20 responses to the consultation, which were considered ahead of finalising the proposed amendments and the supporting supplementary guide. The final revised licence conditions were forwarded to all licensees for attachment to their nuclear site licences by the Directive’s implementation deadline of 22 July 2011.
Between September and December 2011, and again between June and July 2012 the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) consulted upon its proposed approach to interpreting "Bulk Quantities" of radioactive matter for the purposes of determining which installations designed or adapted for the storage of radioactive matter require a nuclear site licence under Section 1 of the Nuclear Installations Act 1965 (NIA) and the Nuclear Installations Regulations 1971 (NIR). Taking the results of these consultations into account, ONR published its position statement in December 2012. The key feature of the position is that ONR will interpret "bulk quantities…" as a quantity of radioactive material equal to or exceeding 100 times the values set out in Schedule 2 of the Radiation (Emergency Preparedness and Public Information) Regulations 2001 (REPPIR)).