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. The HMNII Site Inspector made the following planned visits during the period:
1 - 2 & 20 - 21 April
11 - 14 May
8 - 11 & 28 - 30 June
During this quarter the Hinkley Point B reactors have had a good period of steady operation.
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 the safety of cooling systems containing cast iron pipework and for the emergency exercise (see below).
A meeting was held in April 2004 to review progress on implementing the recom-mendations from the report of the investigation into the fall from scaffold accident that occurred on 3 Sept 2003. British Energy's policy on use of self-closing scaffold gates has been reviewed and it is now policy to fit gates on all scaffolds unless it is not possible to do so. The company Code of Practice for scaffold has been amended accordingly and additional gates have been bought. I have written to Brit-ish Energy asking that they ensure that the lessons learned are implemented on all of their sites.
The Station have experienced problems in ensuring that their maintenance pro-gramme for lifting equipment is fully effective. As a result of these problems, equip-ment such as cranes were occasionally failing their annual statutory tests. We are pleased to see that Station has now contracted a firm of crane specialists to inspect and maintain all the cranes and propose new programmes of maintenance for the fu-ture.
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 generally satisfied with the actions taken.
However, in one of these events, a defect on a safety related valve was inappropri-ately prioritised with the result that a related Technical Specification requirement to repair it within 7 days was not applied. The defect, and Technical Specification breach, remained for around 7 months.
There are multiple barriers in place, such as routine compliance checks of the plant that should detect the inappropriate management of defects, but these appear to have failed on this occasion. However, there had also been previous events that in-dicated potential weaknesses in the defect management process at Hinkley Point B. Although the consequences of these events were nil, they indicate potential deficien-cies in the Station's management arrangements for plant defects and I therefore judged it appropriate to issue a formal Improvement Notice.
The Improvement Notice requires Hinkley Point B to review and revise its arrange-ments for the management of defects and the monitoring of compliance with the safety case; and then put in place an appropriate programme to introduce the re-vised arrangements.
As part of NII routine inspection, discussions are held with Trade Union Safety Rep-resentatives on the Station. These can be simple "chats" on an individual basis or more organised meetings. I held such a meeting with a number of Safety Represen-tatives on 9 June 2004 and they gave me their impressions of safety on the site. I use these discussions to ensure that the Safety Representative system is working ef-fectively at Hinkley Point B, as well as to inform my own inspections. I also provide feedback to the Station Management Team, where appropriate.
A significant leak occurred on a cooling system at Heysham 1 power station in Octo-ber 2003, due to the failure of a flange on a cast iron pipe. Since then, the implica-tions of this failure have been considered across all British Energy Stations. At Hinkley Point B there are some cooling systems with cast iron pipes and British En-ergy have reviewed the safety case for continued operation. This has included non-destructive examination of significant areas of pipework with the resultant replace-ment of some cast iron components. NII have been kept closely informed and a group of NII Specialist Inspectors who are assessing this safety case made a further visit to the Station in April. British Energy have also now developed a strategy for replacing the most safety significant cooling system pipework, and this defers com-pletion of replacement until around June 2005 (from December 2004) which allows more effort to be applied to the replacement programme at Hartlepool Power Station (which is judged to be higher priority).
In my report of Quarter 1 of 2004, I described how British Energy was introducing a Performance Improvement Project. This includes changes to the station staff struc-ture in order to improve operational focus and the management of work. It will also include the recruitment of additional staff. These changes potentially have a benefi-cial effect on safety and NII have been monitoring their implementation so as to be satisfied that British Energy is correctly managing nuclear safety related aspects. This project will continue throughout 2004.
In my report of Quarter 3 of 2003, I described how NII had observed the annual demonstration Emergency Exercise "BARNSLEY" on 3/12/2003. NII judged that the exercise was an adequate demonstration of the emergency arrangements produced by the Station under Licence Condition 11. However, one of the emergency facilities on the site (the Access Control Point) was 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.
As a result, NII witnessed emergency exercise "BELGIUM" on 29 June 2004. NII ac-cepted that this exercise provided the more challenging scenario we were seeking and we confirmed that the functionality of the Access Control Point had been ade-quately demonstrated. As is normal for this type of exercise, we noted some areas where the response could be improved and we will be examining these again during the annual demonstration exercise in December 2004.
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 was issued:-
Approval No 21 was issued under Licence Condition 28(5) on 13 April 2004. This approved a number of changes to the Station Maintenance Schedule.
Under the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, NII Inspectors have the power to issue Improvement Notices. An Improvement Notice was issued on 14 June 2004 (see above) that requires Hinkley Point B to review and revise its arrangements for the management of defects and the monitoring of compliance with the safety case; and then to put in place an appropriate programme to introduce the revised ar-rangements. These actions are to be completed by 15 December 2004
Published on the HSE web site 23 August 2004