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 16–18 August, 25 August, and 20‑21 September 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.
GEHL has submitted a final version of a Safety Management Prospectus, which sets out how the licensee is organised with respect to safety. NII has written commending the document , which now contains an adequate explanation of the intended relationship (as it affects safety) between the licensee and GE, its owner.
As part of its arrangements for compliance with Licence Condition 36, on control of organisational change, GEHL is to produce a Baseline, which is a justification of the current organisational structure, resources and staff competencies available to carry out those functions that may affect safety. Drafts of some of this document were submitted to NII this quarter, and a meeting was held to discuss NII’s assessment of them.
Also under LC36, NII received a proposal for the appointment of a director of safety for the licensee, independent of production, whose function will be, among other things, to provide the Board with an impartial view of the licensee’s safety performance. NII endorsed this proposal.
Annual Emergency Exercise: This year’s demonstration emergency exercise was held on 21 September. It simulated an accident with a forklift truck in a radioactive waste store, leading to four casualties, one of whom was trapped. We noted some improvements in areas criticised last year but also some significant areas where further improvement is necessary. Overall, NII judged the exercise to be a satisfactory demonstration of the licensee’s arrangements for dealing with any accident or emergency arising on the site and its effects.
Interlocks: An inspection followed up GEHL’s discovery of an unexpected potential failure mode of a door interlock in a production plant; extra protection has been added while the integrity of the interlock is reassessed.
Decommissioning: A further meeting was held to discuss the Grove Centre’s decommissioning programme . An inspection was made of an old production facility, whose decommissioning constitutes the largest project in that programme.
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). In this quarter NII issued Approval No 500, approving a new Emergency Plan for the site. This approval has the effect that the plan may not be changed without a further approval.
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.