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 Hunterston B Local Liaison Committee and covers activities associated with the regulation of safety at Hunterston B Nuclear Power Station. These reports are distributed quarterly. Site Inspectors of HM Nuclear Installations Inspectorate normally attend LLC meetings and will respond to any 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.
1.1 The handover of Hunterston site inspection reponsibilities between HMNII inspectors has been completed. 1.2 In addition to the site inspector's planned inspection activities, a number of additional inspections were carried out, some of which involved HMNII specialist inspectors. These inspections were in connection with a number of issues including British Energy's proposal to implement its Work Management Project at Hunterston, Nuclear Fire safety and a partial demonstration of the station's emergency arrangements. The site inspector and other NII specialists attended a meeting to discuss the forthcoming outage of Reactor 3. Additionally, the 50th safety review meeting was held at the station, which was also attended by NII's Superintending Inspector.
The routine inspections for this quarter, covering a range of aspects of plant operation, maintenance, and management were completed. Reactive inspection has also been carried out, with the more significant items reported below. 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.
The Hunterston B level 1 emergency exercise 'Stour' was observed by NII in October. Although NII considered that there had been an adequate demonstration of many aspects of the site emergency arrangements, there were less secure features noted, in particular, the command and control arrangements within the emergency control centre (ECC).
Exercise 'Egilsay' in February provided a further, partial demonstration to NII of the activities within the ECC in response to an emergency.
The station adequately demonstrated its arrangements within the EEC to locate and rescue of a casualty, give advice on public safety, and to manage the engineering recovery from the incident.
British Energy is introducing common core processes across all eight of its stations. A key enabler for this is the implementation of BE's Work Management Project (WMP) which incorporates a new suite of computer programmes.
As reported last quarter, NII had specified that the implementation of WMP was subject to our agreement. A team inspection of the impact of the WMP system on the safe operation of Hunterston B was carried out by NII in January 2003 and we were satisfied that the arrangements in place were adequate and a Licence Instument was subsequently issued agreeing to the implementation of the WMP.
NII was appraised of the work planned for the forthcoming periodic outage for Reactor 3 in June 2003.
The annual review of safety was held at HNB, which was also attended by NII's Superintending Inspector. The opportunity was taken by the Site Inspector and the Superintending Inspector on the previous day, Sunday 30th March, to carry out an inspection of the site.
BE has applied for the re-licensing of Hunterston [and Torness] to bring the whole of its UK nuclear sites under a single licence as this will simplify its internal operations. As part of this process, which will take some time, BE has proposed and implemented with NII agreement reorganization of some of its central support functions under a unified management structure. This will result in some cross-licensee working for which formal arrangements are in place to ensure that each licensee continues to take proper responsibility for nuclear safety.
Following a review of boiler tube leak faults, BE identified the need for a revised safety case and some interim improvements. NII was concerned at the potential impact of the interim modifications and required BE to seek our agreement before implementing them. Following assessment of the safety documentation, NII was satisfied with the interim proposal and we agreed to the modification. We are currently awaiting the consolidated water ingress safety case and details of the associated modifications which will be subject to further NII agreement.
NII's last quarterly report outlined the improvements which had been made by BEG(UK)L to the conventional fire safety aspects of the station. These improvements had enabled HSE to issue a revised fire certificate.
A separate inspection was carried out by NII's nuclear fire safety specialist in March 2003. This inspection found that, since the last similar inspection in June 1999, BEG(UK)L had made considerable improvements in nuclear fire safety. NII considered that the changes to date resulted in adequate nuclear fire safety arrangements; however, both NII and BE recognised that a number of the station's procedures and practices needed to be developed further.
An electrical breaker on a 3.3kV pump failed to open on demand and it was necessary to shut down both reactors to de-energize the pump's electrical supply board to carry out the necessary repairs.
NII considered that BE had acted prudently and promptly in response to this event.
was issued on 21 March 2003, under licence condition 22(1) agreeing to the replacement of the GEC-Elliott load weighing equipment.
was issued on 24 January 2003, under licence condition 22(1), agreeing to the implementation of the Work Management Project.
was issued on 7 February 2003 agreeing to the implementation of an interim modification to inhibit high pressure feed initiation by the Reactor Shutdown Sequencing Equipment prior to the production of a fully consolidated water ingress safety case.
was issued on 28 March 2003 agreeing to the cross licensee working arrangements between BEGL and BEG(UK)L.
Published on the HSE web site 28 May 2003