Health and Safety
Executive / Commission
Nuclear
LLC reports
Inspections
Routine
Matters
Non Routine Matters
Regulatory Activity
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.
The site inspections carried out this quarter were primarily in connection with the three-yearly shutdown of Reactor 3 for statutory maintenance and inspection purposes.
Other site activities included NII's follow-up to the station's own investigations into the entanglement of a craftsperson operating a lathe in the gas circulator workshop at Hunterston.
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.
Reactor 3/Turbine Generator 7 was shut down on 7th June 2003 to carry out its three yearly maintenance, inspection and testing activities.
The Site Inspector, the Superintending Inspector and a number of NII Specialist Inspectors have undertaken sample inspections of the Licensee's arrangements for controlling and completing periodic shutdown work, its execution and its results, paying attention to matters of most safety significance. These inspections raised no significant issues in relation to the Licensee's safety case for the restart of reactor 3 and its operation until the next periodic shutdown in respect of matters related to the current periodic shutdown.
BEG(UK)L submitted a revised Hunterston 'B' emergency plan for Approval, in accordance with the requirements of licence condition 11 of its nuclear site licence. The changes made to the Emergency Plan were essentially limited to bring the existing Hunterston 'B' Emergency Plan more into line with the generic British Energy Emergency Plan and to accommodate the requirements of the REPPIR regulations 2001 in so far as they effect the Emergency Plan.
The revised emergency plan will form the basis of the level 1 demonstration emergency exercise on 23 October 2003.
BEG(UK)L submitted an application to NII on 29 August 2003, under licence condition 28(5), for the Executive's Approval of proposed amendments to the Approved Plant Maintenance Schedule.
The proposed amendments to the preface are associated with document references only; there were no fundamental changes to HNB's MITS arrangements. No changes to the scope of the plant maintenance schedule, the frequency of the maintenance intervals of any safety related plant or equipment or the arrangements for the suspension of maintenance were sought.
It was reported in the last quarterly report that, following a review of boiler tube leak faults, improvements had been carried out to the Vessel Over Pressurisation Protection Equipment on reactor 3 during the shutdown. Similar modifications are planned to be carried out on reactor 4 during a short outage later this year.
In view of the significance attached to the development of a fully consolidated water ingress safety case, prior to giving its formal Consent to the start up of reacto 3, NII obtained assurances from BE that an adequate safety case will have gone through its due process by June 2004 otherwise there will be no case for continued operation.
on 23 June 2003
It was reported in the last quarter that a craftsperson had sustained injuries to his hands, arm and torso after becoming entangled on the rotating parts of a lathe in the gas circulator workshops. Potentially, this event could have resulted in far more serious and possibly fatal injuries.
As part of NII's investigation, we were provided with an action plan that summarized the actions, both at site and corporate level, to address the recommendations arising from the BE's Panel of Inquiry report.
Overall, NII were content with the actions which had been taken and the improvements which had been proposed both to the machines and to the management arrangements. NII expressed strongly the view that the lessons learnt and actions arising from the incident at Hunterston should be reflected fully cross all of BE's sites. NII wrote to the BE Director of Operations on this matter to obtain suitable commitments in the implementation of fleet-wide safety improvements. The action taken by NII was consistent with HSE's Enforcement Policy.
Following the announcement by BE on 2 July of its intention to close its Peel Park offices, the company has been in discussion with staff unions as required by employment law. As previously stated, the location of its staff is a matter for the licensee to determine, but NII is awaiting sight of the company's LC36 Management of Change proposal and NII will then assess whether or not the proposals adequately address the nuclear safety issues linked to the move.
The NII has powers under the nuclear site licence to issue Consents, Approvals and Directions. In addition we use licence instruments to issue Specifications, Notifications and Agreements under the conditions of the licence.
During the period of this report the following were issued:
Published on the HSE web site 17 November 2003