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 Dungeness Power Stations Local Community Liaison Council (LCLC) and covers activities associated with the regulation of safety at Dungeness A Power Station. These reports are distributed quarterly. Site Inspectors of HM Nuclear Installations Inspectorate attend LCLC meetings and will be happy to respond to any questions raised there by members of the LCLC. Any other persons wishing to inquire about matters covered in this report should contact HSE, Nuclear Directorate Information Center on 0151 - 951 - 4103.
NII Inspectors made the following visits to Dungeness A Power Station during the period:
29 April - 1 May 2002
7 - 9 May 2002
13 - 14 May 2002
27 -29 May 2002
11 - 13 June 2002
During these visits the site inspector carried out planned inspections of the licensee's compliance with:
(i) the conditions attached to the Site Licence;
(ii) the Ionising Radiations Regulations; and
(iii) other relevant health and safety legislation.
Every year the station demonstrates its emergency arrangements in an exercise witnessed by the NII. The next Level 1 emergency exercise is planned for 18 September 2002. During the current period the Station played a part in the recent National exercise centered on Bradwell Power Station (Exercise ISIS) . This was the biggest National exercise undertaken to date at a Nuclear Site and addressed the key issue of extendibility of the normal emergency plans. Lessons learnt from this exercise will be fed back to all stations.
As part of planned inspections the site inspector examined the licensee's arrangements for the recording and investigation of events on the station, and where appropriate undertook independent investigations to the extent that was warranted by the significance of the event.
The site inspector and a specialist inspector visited site on 7 - 9 April to sample and challenge the findings from the Reactor 1 outage inspection work to ensure that there were no issues that would prevent the reactor from starting up for a further period of operation.
The HSEs conventional safety inspector visited site with the site inspector on 30 April and 1 May to carry out an inspection of the work practices during the outage. The station demonstrated good standards in the conventional safety areas.
The Superintending Inspector and Site Inspector visited site on 13 and 14 May 2002 to carry out a plant inspection and attend the Reactor 1 start up meeting following the shut down of Reactor 1 for its biennial statutory outage. The Licensee provided the NII with evidence from its outage work to support a period of further operation on reactor 1.
Mr L Williams, NII Chief Inspector, visited site as part of his rolling program where he periodically visits all the major nuclear licensed sites. The Station gave Mr Williams a presentation of the issues affecting Dungeness A and a tour of the site. Mr Williams also met the Safety Representatives and a selection of members of staff. The Station Manager invited Mr Williams to pay another visit to Dungeness A before the end of the financial year to witness improvements being put in place.
The Inspectorate has powers under the License to issue Consents, Approvals and Directions. No Approvals or Directions were issued during this period. In addition the Inspectorate uses Licence Instruments to issue Specifications and Agreements under the conditions attached to the Licence. During the period the following Licence Instruments were issued:
LI 31 which gave our agreement to changes to the Maintenance Schedule to reflect the maintenance requirement for the new Essential Diesel generators.
LI 32 gave our agreement to changes to the Reactor Pressure Vessel shield cooling air system to allow the installation of heaters into the system to improve the temperature control of the reactor pressure vessel.
LI G1 gave our agreement to the top tier restructuring within the BNFL parent company.
During this period the Inspectorate gave its Consent to restart Reactor 1 following its biennial outage.
Published on the HSE web site 3 December 2002