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.
The site inspector has spent the period covered by this report on largely routine planned inspection work.
During the quarter, site inspection visits were carried out on the following dates:
20 - 23 July; 23 -27 August; and
27 - 30 September
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.
The maintenance schedule preface identifies the periodicity of maintenance and testing of key plant and equipment essential for safety. The current preface, which needs to be approved by NII, cannot be changed without a further approval being given. It was reported in NII's last quarterly report that the station proposed to make an amendment to the maintenance schedule preface to allow the redefinition of the maintenance intervals. The station's safety justification in support of the redefinition of maintenance intervals was assessed by NII and Approval Number 33 was subsequently issued to BEG (UK)L.
It was reported in NII's last quarterly report that Exercise Congo had been observed on Thursday 22 April 2004. This level 2 exercise had focused on British Energy's offsite response to a nuclear emergency at Hunterston B. The demonstration was intended to form part of BE's justification in support of its proposal to provide technical support for the Hunterston B off-site facilities using the Central Emergency Support Centre at Barnwood, Gloucester instead of Peel Park.
Following this demonstration, BEG(UK)L submitted an application on 7th June 2004 for NII's Approval, under licence condition 11, of the revised Hunterston B Emergency Plan. Following NII assessment of the BEG(UK)L submission, Approval Number 34 was issued on 6 August 2004
Nuclear Safety Requirements define the safety envelope of a number of key operating parameters and these are formally Approved by NII. BEG(UK)L submitted an application to NII for our approval of amendments to three parameters concerned with channel power, fission gas pressure and fuel can temperature limits.
The approval of these NSRs would allow HNB to adopt the flexible fuel cycle which is designed to simplify the fuel loading arrangements by allowing the station the ability to load fuel of varying enrichments into any reactor core location, subject to a set of limits defined by the current safety case operating envelope.
Although an adequate safety justification was provided to NII to support the changes in channel power and fuel can temperature, NII did not consider that BEG(UK)L's application had provided sufficient safety justification to allow an increase in the assessed fission gas pressure limit. BEG(UK)L accepted NII's position and after further consideration they confirmed that it was not necessary to increase the fission gas pressure limit at this time. However, BEG(UK)L has indicated that a future application may be made to NII for an increase in the fission gas pressure limit.
Approval Number 37 was issued on 20th September 2004, under licence condition 23(5), allowing the station to amend the channel power and fuel can temperature limits in its technical specifications.
A shutdown of Reactor 4 commenced on Monday 16th August 2004 for essential maintenance work, mainly in connection with the replacement of cast iron pipework. The reactor returned to power on Saturday 11th September 2004. The work carried out during this shutdown should allow Reactor 4 to continue operating until its next three-yearly statutory outage, currently planned for 25th June 2005.
NII responds to non-routine events that may affect safety. As part of inspection activities at the site, we investigate safety related events that occur and follow-up those which are perceived initially to have the potential to be more significant. In particular, we examine the licensee's response to such events. From our inspections in this quarter we were satisfied that the response by the station has been in accordance with appropriate
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 Approvals were issued:
Published on the HSE web site 13 December 2004
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