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.
In addition to the site inspector's planned inspection activities, a number of other inspections were carried out, some of which involved HMNII specialist inspectors. These inspections were in connection with a number of issues including radioactive waste management, pressure systems safety regulations and also the follow-up of reported events.
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.
Specialist Inspectors carried out an enhanced inspection of the arrangements at Hunterston B for ensuring compliance with the Pressure Systems Safety Regulations. The inspection reviewed the relevant safety management systems and confirmed their implementation by plant walkdown and sampling of records. Generally, compliance was found to be acceptable.
BE have announced changes in the station structure to improve operational focus and the management of work, and to allow system engineers to focus more effectively on the performance of the systems on the plant. Many of the changes are in response to findings from WANO (World Association of Nuclear Operators) activities. Further changes are expected as BE rolls out its new Performance Improvement Project. The proposed changes have a potentially beneficial effect on safety on the stations.
NII will continue to monitor the implementation of the changes so as to be satisfied that BE is correctly managing nuclear safety on the site.
A radioactive waste inspection involving an NII Specialist Inspector was carried out to ensure that the requirements of the radioactive safety case, which has recently assessed by NII, were being met.
NII identified a number of issues, which BE was required to
address, relating to improvements in the inspection and maintenance
regimes of sumps etc. that are intended to provide secondary
containment of liquid wastes throughout the plant.
.
In accordance with the Radioactive Substances Act 1993, NII as statutory consultees to SEPA, received a copy of HNB's application for a transfer of its operations, including the disposal of radioactive waste, from BEG(UK)L to BEGL.
NII has been asked to consider any nuclear safety aspects of the discharge authorization and provide comments to SEPA.
NII responds to non-routine matters arising on the site that may affect safety, including any reported events. As part of inspection activities at the site, NII investigates safety related events that occur and follow-up those which are perceived initially to have the potential to be more significant, we particularly examine the licensee's response to such events. From our inspections in this quarter we were satisfied that, in general, the events which occurred were relatively minor, and the response by the stations has been in accordance with appropriate arrangements. We summarise our response to the selected events as follows.
It was reported in NII's last quarterly report that NII had assessed BE's investigation report concenring the discovery of an unauthorised modification to the fuel handling machine. The Site Inspector carried out a follow-up investigation into this event, in conjunction with two NII Specialist Assessors.
NII accepted that HNB had introduced additional management controls to prevent a recurrence of this event and that the station's programme for the permanent improvement to the relay testing arrangements was sufficiently developed.
Following a failure of a cast iron pipe at its Heysham I plant in Lancashire, BE carried out a review of similar cast iron pipework installations at its Hunterston B, Hinkley Point B and Hartlepool sites. BE provided justifications for continuous operations (JCOs) for these sites to NII.
As a result of a failure of a cast iron puddle pipe on the Auxillary Cooling Water system (ACWS) at Hunterston B, the station management took the decision to manually shutdown reactor 3. Although the ACWS does not provide the same safety significant functions as compared to the system that had been affected at Heysham 1, BE was asked to review whether there were any implications on the test results, assessment criteria used and the decisions taken at assessment panels on the justification for continuous operations (JCOs) produced for Hunterston, and other significantly affected reactors in the fleet.
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 no formal licence instruments were issued.
Published on the HSE web site 7 October 2004