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 Capenhurst Local Stakeholder Group (LSG) and covers activities associated with the regulation of safety at Capenhurst. These reports are distributed quarterly. Site Inspectors of HM Nuclear Installations Inspectorate normally attend LSG meetings and will be happy to respond to questions raised there or subsequently by members of the LSG. 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 was visited by NII inspectors on :-
October 12th , 13th, 14th, 21st November 1st , 23rd , 24th December 15th
Each NII Site Inspector has an inspection programme to inspect compliance of operations on the site with the 36 Nuclear Site Licence Conditions (LCs). No significant issues were raised from the compliance inspections undertaken during this period..
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) requires all sites, which will come under their control in April 2005, to compile the long term and short term work plans for the site into two standard documents ie Life Cycle Baseline (LCBL) and Near Term Work Plan (NTWP). The NDA review of the second version of the BNFL Capenhurst Life Cycle Baseline (LCBL2) was attended. Both NII & EA informed the NDA review that although they had been involved in various discussions regarding the processes being adopted for the compilation of the LCBL2 the regulators had not been given any detailed information on the LCBL2 prior to this review meeting. However throughout the review BNFL Capenhurst did not present any information on their future plans and programmes which the regulators were not aware of in general. The regulators also stated that they were unable at this stage to comment on whether all regulatory requirements had been adequately reflected in the plans.
The endstate assumption for the site in the LCBL2 is a licensed "brown field" site. It was established that no costs had been attributed to any delicensing activity although the need for such activities had been recognised. One aspect that NII did feel may not be adequately reflected in the LCBL2 was the interactions with other sites especially BNFL Springfields regarding some of the remaining waste/residue streams. One major element of the LCBL2 which will require further review is the BNFL Capenhurst plan to build a Hex decoversion plant for operation between 2020 -2030. Given the recent announcement by UCL to build a deconversion plant on their site the planned review of BNFL Capenhurst Hex storage policy in 2005 will be timely. NDA also indicated that it would encourage BNFL Capenhurst to revisit the plans for the uranic storage operations to review other options and opportunities other than their plan to store the material until 2120 and then dispose.
A meeting was held to discuss the latest position with respect to the proposals for the reorganisation of the management of the BNFL Capenhurst site in relation to the introduction of the NDA in April 05. It has now been decided that BNFL Capenhurst will be part of the Sellafield management structure. BNFL outlined the Management of Change (MoC) documentation relating to the revised management reporting structure that will be reviewed by NII as part of the work being undertaken for the scrutiny of the reorganisation proposals.
The NII/BNFL Capenhurst Annual Review of Safety Meeting was held on 23.11.04. BNFL Capenhurst gave a number of presentations on the review of safety and environment performance, production/project matters over the last year and outlined their future plans and projects. NII gave a short presentation on the findings of the NII inspections at BNFL Capenhurst over the past year. NII indicated it would be endeavouring to ensure that BNFL Capenhurst dealt with their hex tails material as soon as possible and NII also expressed concerns about BNFL Capenhurst plans to close the site incinerator in mid 05.
Various discussions have been held with BNFL Capenhurst to progress the proposal from BNFL Capenhurst to move some of the decommissioning workers in B300 from "classified worker" to "monitored worker" status. The discussions were held to probe the arguments and information which BNFL had tabled in support of their proposals. NII indicated it required BNFL to provide additional data and some further justification to enable NII to complete it review of the BNFL proposals. BNFL have now forwarded the required information and NII has now completed its consideration of the proposals and all the NII issues have now been addressed by BNFL Capenhurst.
A team of NII inspectors witnessed the BNFL Capenhurst Level 1 Demonstration Emergency Exercise codenamed "Dipper". The scenario was based on a criticality occurrence during decommissioning operations in B300. The objectives of the exercise were focused on testing the new arrangements in the Building 606 Evacuation Centre after its refurbishment particularly the dealing with the large numbers of personnel for roll call, the segregation of irradiated personnel, limiting the spread of contamination and casualty treatment. Overall it was considered that the exercise was completed satisfactorily although, as expected, there were a number of issues and comments eg adequacy of the muster point arrangements and facilities which needed further consideration and action. These issues have been forwarded to BNFL Capenhurst and the resolution of the actions will be progressed within the NII/BNFL Emergency Arrangements programme of meetings.
The latest meeting of the Capenhurst Emergency Planning Consultative Committee (EPCC) was attended.
The latest meeting of the Capenhurst Local Stakeholder Group (LSG) held on 24.11.04 was attended.
Nothing to report this period
Regulatory Actions taken during the quarter -
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The Inspectorate has powers under the licence to issue Consents, Approvals and Directions. In addition, the Inspectorate uses Licence Instruments to issue Specifications, Acknowledgements and Agreements under either the conditions attached to the Licence, or arrangements made by BNFL for complying with those conditions. The Consents/Approvals/Directions and Licence Instruments issued during the quarter were -
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HM Principal Inspector (Nuclear Installations)
Published on the HSE web site 08 February 2005 Back to Local Liaison Committee reports index page