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 Berkeley and Oldbury Local Community Liaison Council and covers activities associated with the regulation of safety at Oldbury Nuclear Power Station. These reports are distributed quarterly. Site Inspectors of HM Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (part of the Health and Safety Executive's Nuclear Directorate) attend LCLC meetings and will be happy to respond to any questions raised there by members of the LCLC. Any other person wishing to inquire about matters covered by this report should contact the HSE, Nuclear Directorate Information Centre
The HMNII Site Inspector for the Oldbury site and other Inspectors visited on the following dates:
3-4 April 2002From April 1 2002 NII adopted its new Integrated Enforcement Stategy (IES). As part of this strategy the NII has developed a Site Inspection Plan for Oldbury. This three-year plan is designed to ensure that the licensee is inspected for compliance against all the 36 licence conditions for site-wide matters, plus the licence conditions relevant to each of the key safety systems. The plan also includes other statutory provisions, eg the Ionising Radiations Regulations.
In this quarter-year period site-wide compliance inspection was undertaken on Incidents (LC7), Emergency Arrangements (LC11), Quality Assurance (LC17) and Shutdown and Start-Up (LC30). Where these inspections revealed scope for improvements in the site's arrangements the Site Inspector raised these issues with the appropriate Management Team member or the Station Manager. Some shortcomings were identified in the arrangements for identifying and progressing corrective actions arising from the investigation of events. The Station has agreed to modify those arrangements to ensure adequate management oversight and timely completion.
Reactor 2 shut down on 9 June 2002 for its triennial statutory outage to enable those examination, inspection, testing and maintenance activities to take place that can only be done when the reactor is not operating. (The reactor would remain shutdown until the middle of July.) The scope and extent of these activities were agreed with NII prior to shutdown. The Site Inspector and other Specialist Inspectors from NII undertook a range of inspections in June during the outage. These included IES planned compliance inspections related to outage activities on Quality Assurance (LC17), Operating Rules (LC23), Operating Instructions (LC24), Operational Records (LC25), Control and Supervision of Operations (LC26), Safety Mechanisms (LC27) and Examination/Inspection/Maintenance/Testing (LC28). The Specialist Inspectors inspected activities related to structural integrity, graphite core, and conventional health and safety. Generally, the station's planned outage activities progressed smoothly and satisfactorily with good control of conventional health and safety. Technical issues arising from station's outage activities were identified with a view to resolving those matters before NII gives its legal Consent to restart Reactor 2 in July.
As reported in the last NII quarterly report, NII had agreed to the installation of the IONSIV system in the cooling pond to mitigate the build-up of caesium. However, NII agreement to active commissioning would require the station to provide further safety documentation and evidence of a NIREX "letter of comfort" on the concept of packaging the arising wastes. These have now been received by NII and judged adequate. Therefore NII has issued a licence instrument agreeing to the active commissioning and use of IONSIV.
There were no significant events warranting NII investigation this quarter. NII continues to monitor the actions arising from the three events described in last NII quarterly report.
The Inspectorate has power under the licence to issue Consents, Approvals and Directions. In addition the Inspectorate uses Licence Instruments to issue Specifications and Agreements under the conditions attached to the licence.
The table below summarises the formal Directions, Consents, Approvals and Licence Instruments (LI) issued during the quarter:
| Date | Type | No. | Description |
| 14 June 2002 | LI | G1 | Agreement under LC 36(1) to the top level restructuring of BNFL. |
| 14 June 2002 | LI | 28 | Paper of Principle on Proposal to Remove Caesium from the Ponds using IONSIV units - Agreement to active commissioning |
Published on the HSE web site 29 August 2002