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 GE Healthcare Ltd Grove Centre Local Liaison Committee (LLC) and covers activities associated with the regulation of safety at the site. These reports are distributed quarterly and are available also from the Internet at www.hse.gov.uk/nuclear/llc/index.htm. Site Inspectors of HM Nuclear Installations Inspectorate attend LLC meetings and will be happy to respond to any questions raised there by members. Any other person wishing to enquire about matters covered by this report may contact HSE’s Nuclear Directorate Information Centre on 0151-951-4103.
NII inspections were made on 5–7 April and 26 May 2005. (Inspections are also made at GE Healthcare Ltd’s nuclear licensed sites at Cardiff (the Maynard Centre) and Harwell. Where these are relevant to the Grove Centre they are included below. For instance, the sites have many arrangements in common for compliance with the conditions attached to their site licences.)
Inspections are undertaken for the purpose of monitoring compliance with (i) the conditions attached by HSE to the nuclear site licences, and (ii) other relevant provisions of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, including the Ionising Radiations Regulations 1999. In this period routine inspections included:
Issues arising from these and previous inspections are being pursued.
Decommissioning: A meeting was held to discuss the Grove Centre’s decommissioning programme . An inspection was made of a major element of that programme, the Senior Caves project. The caves have been under care and maintenance since they were contaminated in the 1960s; work to decommission them will take many years but is now under way.
Remediation: A major project is under way to deal with another legacy of historical operations on the site, namely areas of land on the site that have been contaminated. A meeting was held to review progress on this project.
New Projects: Meetings were held to discuss the safety implications of two new projects, one to increase the site’s production of technetium generators, the other to manufacture a radioactive imaging agent new to the site.
Safety Representatives: The site inspector held a periodic meeting with Safety Representatives, to support their function of representing employees and receiving information on matters affecting their health, safety, and welfare at work.
Local Liaison Committee: The site inspector attended the 6-monthly meeting of the Local Liaison Committee.
No statutorily reportable radiological incidents were notified to NII in this quarter.
As part of its regulation under the nuclear site licence NII issues formal regulatory documents, which include Consents, Approvals, Directions, and Licence Instruments (1). No such documents were issued during this quarter.
No other issues have arisen that have required formal regulatory action.
1. Licence Instruments are issued: to acknowledge receipt of specified documents, eg proposals for a new or modified plant; to stipulate whether the Inspectorate intends to examine these documents; or to agree to the start of a particular phase of construction, commissioning, modification, or decommissioning.