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.
This report will be put onto the HSE website at http://www.hse.gov.uk/nuclear/llc/index.htm under ‘Local Liaison Committee Reports’.
NII inspectors visited the site on the following dates:
5th, 7th & 21st April
10th and 20th May
10th and 29th June.
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 compliance inspections were undertaken during this period, as the incoming site inspector, (since 1 st April 2005), following site handover from his predecessor, has been engaged on reactive site inspections at Sellafield for much of this period.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which assumed ownership of the site on 1 st April 2005, (from British Nuclear Fuels plc, BNFL), required all of the sites which came under their control to compile the long term and short term work plans for the site into two standard documents i.e. Life Cycle Baseline (LCBL) and Near Term Work Plan (NTWP) respectively.
BNGSL Capenhurst confirmed that the review of the current policy for commencing ‘Hex Deconversion’ in 2020 and the long term uranic storage policy had been included as a required 2005-6 work activity in the current NTWP. NII has continued to press the licensee to explore options to bring forward the date for the commencement of processing the Hex Tails stored on site. NII expressed disappointment that the policy issued after the recent review had failed to advance the declared start date for the planned deconversion of Hex Tails, although it was understood that work was being progressed to actively develop options for progress to be made prior to 2020. NII will continue to press for timely progress to be made in reducing this remaining site hazard.
During an NDA review of the NTWP, BNGSL Capenhurst indicated that the scope of work within the NTWP 2 had been changed, with two blocks of work being deferred beyond the three year NTWP 2 timescales. The first related to the deferral of the demolition of a number of decommissioned plants. The second block of deferred work was related to the programme of solid low level radioactive waste disposals to Drigg. This deferral would have resulted in the extended storage of solid low level waste on the site, in ISO containers. The NII site inspector wrote to express strong concerns about the deferral of this work, particularly the deferred disposal of the wastes. The licensee has now agreed with NDA to advance this work, such that programmed waste disposals from the site have been substantially increased. This change demonstrated the value of timely involvement of NII as a key stakeholder in Near Term Work Plan reviews.
An inspection of the arrangements on site for the control of radioactive contamination was carried out in the first quarter of this year. Generally, the arrangements at BNGSL Capenhurst were considered adequate. A number of minor issues were identified, to which the licensee has responded adequately.
As part of a corporate reorganisation, agreed by NII, the name of the licensee changed to “British Nuclear Group Sellafield Limited”, (BNGSL) on 1 st April 2005.
Regulatory Actions taken during the quarter –
DATE |
DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|
None |
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 British Nuclear Group Sellafield Limited for complying with those conditions. No Consents/Approvals/Directions and Licence Instruments were issued during the quarter, although a Variation was implemented on 1 st April 2005, thus:
DATE |
TYPE |
No |
DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|---|---|
24 March 2005 |
Variation |
501 |
Variation to site licence condition 3, to come in to force on 1 st April 2005. (This variation was implemented on sites where NDA acquired ownership on 1 st April and also reflected the change in name of the UKAEA Constabulary to the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, at the same time). |
HM Principal Inspector (Nuclear Installations)