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 Dungeness Site Stakeholder Group (SSG) and covers activities associated with the regulation of safety at Dungeness B Power Station. These reports are distributed quarterly. Site Inspectors of HM Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (part of the Health and Safety Executive's Nuclear Directorate) attend LCLC meetings and will be happy to respond there to questions raised by members of the LCLC. Any 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 placed on the HSE website at www.hse.gov.uk/nuclear/llc/index.htm under “Local Liaison Committee Reports”.
1.1 The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) Site Inspector visited Dungeness B on the following dates during the quarter covered by this report:
1.2 On 5 July the NII site inspector undertook a joint inspection of radioactive waste management facilities with the Environment Agency site inspector.
1.3 The NII site inspector was joined, at various times, by specialist and support inspectors as follows:
1.4 Other NII inspectors with specialist technical expertise also visited Dungeness B and other British Energy establishments during the period to support the Site Inspector by performing inspections on specific aspects of the Licensee’s arrangements and nuclear safety case.
Routine planned inspections are carried out throughout the year and enable NII to judge whether a Licensee is complying with the conditions attached to the Nuclear Site Licence, the Ionising Radiations Regulations, and other relevant statutory provisions on a sampling basis. In this period routine inspections covered:
In general the station’s arrangements were found to be satisfactory. In those areas where improvements were identified, satisfactory commitments to address the issues were made by the station.
2.1 Emergency Arrangements
As previously reported, an NII team witnessed the Licensee’s annual “Level 1” demonstration emergency exercise on the evening of 12 April and concluded that, whilst many aspects were satisfactory, deficiencies in two areas prevented the exercise from providing an adequate demonstration of the Licensee’s emergency arrangements. NII has since witnessed a further exercise and noted significant improvements in these aspects. We judged that this further exercise had provided an adequate demonstration of the Licensee’s emergency arrangements.
2.2 Waste Handling
The joint NII/EA site inspection on 5 July identified an improvement in the material condition of waste handling facilities and identified no particular points of concern.
As part of their planned inspection site inspectors examine safety related events that have occurred and the Licensee’s response to them. Generally the Licensee’s internal system for following up events is robust and the appropriate actions are implemented. More noteworthy events during the period include the following:
3.1 Defective Fuel Elements
In the Spring of 2005 we became concerned that 9 fuel elements with very small defects were known to be present in the two operating reactors. Whilst recognising the low probability that any one defect would develop into a significant failure, we pressed for early removal of the defective fuel elements. The Licensee subsequently committed to a programme under which all elements known to be defective should be removed from the reactors by April 2006. This is a key focus for the station and 4 of the defective elements have been removed from the reactors.
3.2 Cracks in Drain Lines
During the continuing outage of Unit 22, the Licensee has identified small cracks in drainage lines near parts of the reactor pressure circuits. NII has monitored the developing situation closely. Subsequent analysis by the Licensee has found that the cracks are not as deep as at first thought, but we have asked to assess the Licensee’s safety case justifying continued operation before issuing a Consent for Unit 22 to return to service after its statutory outage. We are content for Unit 21 to continue to operate until related inspections can be carried out during its next scheduled statutory outage commencing in March 2006.
Under Health and Safety legislation the Site Inspector, or other HSE Inspectors, may issue formal notices to secure improvements to safety. No such notices were issued during the reporting period.
Th e Inspectorate has powers under the Licence to issue Consents, Approvals and Directions. In addition the Inspectorate uses Licence Instruments to issue Specifications and Agreements under the conditions of the Licence. These are all called Licence Instruments. In accordance with formal regulatory procedure, NII issued the following Licence Instruments to Dungeness B under Site Licence No. 61 during the reporting period: