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 sites available to the public. It is for distribution to members of the AWE Local Liaison Committee (LLC) and covers activities associated with the regulation of safety at Aldermaston and Burghfield. These reports are distributed quarterly and are available also from the Internet at http://www.hse.gov.uk/nuclear/index.htm. Site Inspectors of HM Nuclear Installations Inspectorate attend LLC meetings and will be happy to respond to any questions raised there by members. Any other person wishing to enquire about matters covered by this report may contact HSE's Nuclear Directorate Information Centre on 0151-951-4103.
1. A total of 20 NII inspectors visited the Aldermaston and Burghfield sites during the quarter. In addition a group of senior NII inspectors visited Aldermaston as part of a programme involving all nuclear licensees. Also the Deputy Chief Inspector made the second of two familiarization visits to AWE. Inspections were made on the following days:
| Aldermaston |
1 July 6 - 7 July 13 -16 July 3 - 5 August 17 - 20 August 23 - 26 August 31 August - 2 September 14 - 15 September 21 - 24 September 28 - 30 September |
| Burghfield |
14 July 3 & 5 August 31 August 2 September 9 September 22- 24 September 27 - 30 September |
2. Inspections are undertaken for the purpose of monitoring compliance with (i) the conditions attached by HSE to the nuclear site licences, and (ii) other relevant provisions of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, including the Ionising Radiations Regulations 1999. In this period routine inspections included:
a. Provision and assessment of safety cases and compliance with
arrangements made under licence conditions.
b. Management of facility operations and maintenance.
c. Proposals for new plants.
d. Emergency arrangements.
e. Decommissioning of redundant facilities.
f. Waste management.
g. Operating rules, operating instructions, and operational
records.
h. Arrangements for the control of modifications to existing
plants.
i. Arrangements for the notification, recording, investigation, and
reporting of incidents on the sites.
3. Issues arising from these and previous inspections are being pursued. Inspections were made also by HSE's factory inspectors, construction inspector, explosives inspectors, and fire assessor.
4. Fire Certificates.
The HSE fire surveyor has visited site and inspected some facilities.
Due to security clearance issues he was unable to visit the key
production facilities to confirm that the licensee had complied with
the 'steps to take' notices. Until recently HSE had not been
able to resource this work and AWE has been carrying out their own
surveys and making recommendations. Where the HSE surveyor has seen
the results of this work he finds it acceptable. New Fire
Certificates are to be issued shortly.
5. Quinquennial Review:
NII held a meeting with AWE to discuss their response to issues
arising from NII's Quinquennial Review. AWE updated NII on its
progress on QQR issues. AWE has made good progress in many areas,
namely decommissioning and waste management planning and waste
minimisation. There are other areas, such as justification of
deferred decommissioning, development of long term waste management
strategies and development of safety cases for radioactively
contaminated land, which will require further NII consideration.
6. Seismic Categorisation:
AWE is currently in the process of carrying out the Site Seismic
Categorisation for both licensed sites. They are in discussions with
NII assessors and wish to be able to establish a level of consequence
below which they will not have to assess seismic hazard
7. Annual Review Meeting:
The annual safety review meeting between HSE and AWE senior
management was held in July. This is an opportunity for AWE to
discuss future plans and for HSE to raise current and anticipated
future areas of concern or difficulty, where recognition of the
issues and a commitment from the AWE directors is sought.
8. Use of Contractors in Decommissioning Work:
AWE has affirmed their intention to draw heavily upon contractors for
future decommissioning work. Their aim is to use a specialist
"Principal Contractors" who will manage large projects as
opposed to placing smaller teams of contractors into facilities where
they are managed directly by AWE staff. The licensee have been told
that whilst NII has no objection in principle to this approach, AWE
will need to demonstrate that they have put in place suitable and
sufficient systems to specify the contractor's work and to
maintain adequate control and supervision i.e. they meet the
intelligent customer/controlling mind requirements.
9. Routine visit of Deputy Chief Inspector:
In line with routine NII practice, Mr R Gray, the Deputy Chief
Inspector with responsibility for defence related sites, visited the
Aldermaston site. This was his second visit to AWE. On this occasion
he toured Aldermaston production facilities, to observe standards of
safety and to meet with AWE staff.
10. Demonstration Emergency Exercise:
The annual demonstration level 1 emergency exercise was held at
Aldermaston. This year a criticality scenario was chosen to be tested
at AWE. The NII team judged that the demonstration was acceptable,
and a number of useful learning points were identified. Unfortunately
no off-site emergency services were able to participate. These would
have added to the challenge posed by the scenario. However AWE has
demonstrated adequate procedures for co-ordinating Local Authority
services at previous demonstration exercises, and has an on-site
training arrangement with RBFS.
11. Intermediate Level Waste Strategy:
A meeting with AWE set out their strategy for extended storage of
intermediate level waste. It involves optimising the use of the
stores, changing from 205 litre drums to 500 litre Nirex drums by
2008, and bringing into operation an ILW treatment plant to sort
segregate and re-package legacy ILW drums by 2015. NII had no
objection in principle to the proposal for reconfiguring storage
arrays, provided the licensee can make an adequate safety case; this
is expected in November 2004. However it was agreed that the paper
did not define a 100-year strategy since it was primarily concerned
with ILW store re-configuration issues and did not address waste form
issues (conditioning, compatibility of waste form and Nirex 500 litre
drum, passivation, etc). NII made clear that unconditioned waste
storage over long periods was unlikely to be acceptable.
12. Box Bay Line Decommissioning:
NII met with AWE to discuss their progress in preparing a safety case
covering the Box Bay Line and use of plasma arc cutting (PAC)
technology. The safety case is being submitted to the NSC in October
2004, and AWE will subsequently seek NII agreement to proceed with
decommissioning. Operations covered by the safety case are scheduled
to commence around March 2005.
13. NII Inspection Co-ordination Group:
As part of their routine activities the ICG, made up of NII
Superintending Inspectors, held a meeting at Aldermaston and visited
various decommissioning facilities. These visits to all licensees
allow the NII inspection managers to gain familiarity with the
different sites and formulate a view with regard to consistency of
inspection and future workloads.
14. Demonstration Emergency Exercise:
The annual level 1 demonstration exercise was witnessed by an HSE
team of NII and HID inspectors. The MoD Nuclear Weapons Regulator
also reviewed the exercise as part of the regulatory team. The
licensee was judged to have given a good demonstration of its
emergency arrangements and training. Participation of the local
authority emergency services allowed a scenario to be set in which
the AWE fire service became casualties requiring rescue.
15. Operations on site:
NII has held discussions with AWE on the need to upgrade the
infrastructure services on site and refurbishment of the facilities
to meet modern standards.
16. NII Nominated Site Inspector:
The NII site inspection duties at Burghfield were handed over to Mr
Andrew Lindley at the end of September.
19 As part of its regulation under the nuclear site licences NII issues formal regulatory documents, which include Consents, Approvals, Directions, and Licence Instruments .
20 Licence Instrument No. 29, Notification under licence condition 21, for Bays 3 & 4 of A90.
21 No other issues have arisen that have required formal regulatory action.
1 Licence Instruments are issued to acknowledge receipt of specified documents, eg proposals for a new or modified plant; to stipulate whether the Inspectorate intends to examine these documents, or to agree to the start of a particular phase of construction, commissioning, modification, or decommissioning.
Published on the HSE web site 10 January 2005