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 Hinkley Point Local Community Liaison Council (LCLC) and covers activities associated with the regula-tion of safety at Hinkley Point B Power Station. These reports are distributed quar-terly. Site Inspectors of HM Nuclear Installations Inspectorate normally attend LCLC meetings and will be happy to respond to any questions raised there or subsequently by members of the LCLC. Any other person wishing to inquire about matters cov-ered by this report should contact the HSE, Nuclear Directorate Information Centre on 0151-951-4103.
Routine inspections continued in accordance with our annual plan and no significant nuclear safety issues arose.
The HMNII Site Inspector made the following planned visits during the period:
6 - 10 October
3 - 7 November
30 November - 5 December
During this quarter the Station returned to a steady period of operation, following the return to service of Reactor 3 after its' planned periodic shutdown.
Routine inspections have continued throughout the period to confirm that the site is operating in compliance with the conditions attached to the Nuclear Site Licence. In areas where opportunities for improvement were identified, remedial work has been agreed with station management, with the intention of achieving improvements to current station arrangements in those areas.
Specialist NII inspectors also visited the Station to support the site inspector with in-spections of electrical systems and maintenance planning. The electrical systems inspection was a follow-up to a previous detailed inspection and progress against the issues identified then was also reviewed. The inspection confirmed that the Station's response to addressing these issues was positive and many of the actions identified have been completed satisfactorily. Additional work remains ongoing and we will monitor this.
The Quarterly report for July - September described how the planned periodic shut-down of Reactor 3 took place during August and September. This also described how the NII site inspector and NII Specialist Inspectors reviewed the conduct and re-sults of inspection programmes and other matters in relation to the outage.
At the end of the Outage, NII reviewed the work done and assurances provided by the Licensee and agreed that Reactor 3 could return to service for a further three years operation. A formal Consent to allow this was issued by NII on 2 October 2003.
The Level 1 Emergency Exercise "BARNSLEY" was held on 3/12/2003 to demon-strate the effectiveness of the arrangements, produced by the Station under Licence Condition 11, to deal with nuclear emergencies. A team from HMNII witnessed the exercise and judged that the exercise was an adequate demonstration of the emer-gency arrangements. However, one of the emergency facilities on the site (the Ac-cess Control Point) is fairly new and we agreed that it would be beneficial for NII to witness an additional exercise in this facility in about six months time.
The Quarterly report for July - September reported that two potentially serious acci-dents occurred during the Reactor 3 outage. NII investigated both these accidents. We were also satisfied that BEGL were conducting their own thorough investigations and we awaited their reports. Since then the reports have been issued and these in-clude recommendations aimed at preventing such events in future. NII has written to British Energy and one of its contractors asking for a progress report on the imple-mentation of these recommendations.
The management and recording of some events that occurred on the station during the period were inspected. Most of these were relatively minor and those of concern to the HMNII Site Inspector were discussed with the appropriate company staff. HMNII was satisfied with the actions taken.
The events investigated included a small fire in the Superheater steam pipe area of the Reactor 3 building. This occurred on 2 October as Reactor 3 was being returned to service following its periodic shutdown. The fire was quickly extinguished by the Station fire team, but in accordance with established procedures, the Somerset County Fire brigade also attended the scene. The fire was found to be due to a small piece of wood which had become trapped inside steam pipe lagging. The incident was disappointing as the NII Site Inspector had already raised the issue of the risks of wood being brought into the reactor building for the outage. Overall the Station's response to the incident was satisfactory and NII have asked to be advised of the corrective actions taken following the Licensee's investigation.
As part of the liaison between NII and the Environment Agency (EA), the NII Site In-spector took part in an EA team inspection of environmental protection related issues at Hinkley Point B. The inspection identified a number of positive areas and some issues on which improvements could be made. These will be followed-up by EA.
Site Licence:
The Inspectorate has powers under the Nuclear Site Licence to issue Consents, Ap-provals and Directions. In addition, the Inspectorate uses Licence Instruments to is-sue Specifications and Agreements under the conditions attached to the Site Li-cence.
During this quarter, the following Consents and Licence Instruments were issued:-
Consent No 20 was issued under Licence Condition 30(3) on 2 October 2003. This consented to the start up of Reactor No. 3 following its planned periodic shutdown.
An Agreement (Licence Instrument No 40) was issued on 19 November 2003. The Agreement, issued under BEGL's arrangements for complying with Licence Condi-tion 22, allows the type of oil used for lubricating the gas circulators to be changed.
Published on the HSE web site 8 March 2004.