Health and Safety
Executive / Commission
Nuclear
LLC reports
This report is issued as part of the Health and Safety Executive's commitment to make information about inspection and regulatory activities relating to the above site available to the public. It is for distribution to members of the CHAPELCROSS Local Liaison Committee (LLC) and covers activities associated with the regulation of safety at CHAPELCROSS. These reports are distributed quarterly. Site Inspectors of HM Nuclear Installations Inspectorate attend LLC meetings and will be happy to respond to any questions raised there by members of the LLC. Any other person wishing to inquire about matters covered by this report should contact the HSE, Nuclear Directorate Information Centre on 0151-951-4103.
The Site Inspector made the following planned visits during the period:
30 September - 1 October 2002
3 October 2002
9 October 2002
30-31 October 2002
6-7 November 2002
14 November 2002
4-5 December 2002
13 December 2002
were carried out during the quarter. Such inspections are carried out throughout the year, and enable the Inspectorate to judge whether a Licensee is complying with the conditions attached to a site licence , the Ionising Radiations Regulations, and any other relevant statutory provisions on a sampling basis. The Site Inspector was satisfied from the sample inspections undertaken that Chapelcross had shown satisfactory compliance.
In our last Quarterly Report, I described BNFL's progress in implementing recommendations arising from NII's investigation of this incident. At that time, only Recommendation 12 remained to be completed. BNFL has now carried out its review of the Chapelcross fuel route and this has completed Recommendation 12. Therefore, it has met its commitment to implement the recommendations in NII's report of its investigation into the dropped discharge fuel basket incident. Presently, the NII is assessing BNFL's response to Recommendation 12 as this will form the basis of BNFL's further improvements of the fuel route. As stated in the previous report, the NII site inspector will monitor and regulate BNFL's programme of work arising from the recommendations in NII's investigation report, to modify and improve the fuel route to enhance its safety.
The management and records of events that happened at Chapelcross in the period covered by this report were inspected. Mostly, these were relatively minor, and those of concern to the NII Site Inspector were discussed with appropriate BNFL staff to ensure that they were being properly dealt with and lessons learnt. The Site Inspector was satisfied that for events identified, corrective actions to address the causes of the incidents had been taken or were being progressed satisfactorily.
4.1 The Inspectorate has powers under the Licence to issue Consents, Approvals and Directions. In addition the Inspectorate uses Licence Instruments to issue Specifications and Agreements under the conditions of the Licence. The following documents were issued during the period:
was issued on 11 November 2002 permitting Chapelcross to operate Reactor 3 chargepans for a further 6 month period of operation sought by BNFL. The previous Quarterly Report described this issue which is due to ageing of the graphite core, and explained that BNFL had adequate safety cases to operate Reactors 2, 3 and 4 only until their next outages. During R3's outage, BNFL carried out inspections to underpin a safety case to justify its return to power. During this quarter, NII has been assessing BNFL's proposal for a modification to align chargepans with control rod and fuel channels to effect a repair, and a specialist inspector visited Chapelcross on 26/9/02 to pursue this.
Published on the HSE web site 6 June 2003