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 BAE SYSTEMS Marine Ltd Local Liaison Committee (LLC) and covers activities associated with the regulation of safety at the Barrow nuclear licensed site. These reports are distributed quarterly. Site Inspectors of HM Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) normally attend LLC meetings and will be happy to respond to questions raised there or subsequently 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.
NII's main objective over the period of this report continues to be to confirm compliance by the licensee with site licence conditions. There are virtually no nuclear materials on the site, but inspections are part of the regulatory process aiming to allow BAE SYSTEMS Marine Ltd (BAES) to perform nuclear work at Barrow when required and to be ready to receive nuclear fuel for ASTUTE class submarines.
Visits are made to the site for the purpose of undertaking routine
plant and project inspections or meeting site management or safety
representatives. Joint inspections with MoD Naval Nuclear Regulatory
Panel, NNRP, are also undertaken where there are areas of mutual
interest. 10 NII inspector-days were spent on the site as
follows:
NII attended the annual demonstration exercise (delayed from November 2002) which mainly centred on operation of the new Incident Control Centre on the site. NII considered this to be a satisfactory demonstration and that the licensee would have coped with a real incident of the type covered by the scenario. BAES are continuing to develop their arrangements and at the RIF (para 2.2 below) provided an exercise programme to address the requirements of NII and NNRP leading up to power range testing of Astute.
A joint regulatory meeting was held with NNRP and the Company (Regulatory Interface Forum, RIF). Discussions included the organisational arrangements for submarines at Barrow following high level changes in BAES' shipbuilding organisation, the status of safety case documentation and the BAES forward inspection programme for licence compliance. A follow-on meeting discussed a formal Periodic Safety Review of the safety case documentation. The Company has already made progress on this through its ongoing review of facilities and the safety case; this needs to be structured to meet NII licence and NNRP authorisation requirements.
A joint meeting was held with NNRP and the Company to review and discuss improvements to the cranes in the Devonshire Dock Hall. These discussions will continue for a period of time to ensure that appropriate and reasonably practicable facility improvements can be made in time to meet the Astute submarine programme.
In order to comply with BAES's arrangements for visiting the site, NII inspectors joined with the NNRP Site Inspector and Assistant Site Inspector and NNRP technical assessment personnel in attending a site induction course which provided site familiarisation and instruction on health and safety.
The NII site inspector carried out an investigation into an abnormal personal dosemeter reading for one individual carrying out non-destructive examination. The reading was within statutory limits and the investigation confirmed the main finding from BAES's internal investigation, that the individual had not received the recorded dose. However, there were breaches of procedural controls and the Company has rewritten a number of procedures in addition to taking appropriate action once the reading had been discovered. NII are not considering further action but have requested assurance from the Company that lessons learnt from the incident have been promulgated within appropriate areas of the Company.
NII issues formal regulatory documents called Consents and Approvals, together with licence instruments where these are called for under conditions attached to the site licence. Directions may also be issued at the discretion of NII. No licence instruments were issued during this period.
Published on the HSE web site 6 June 2003