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 sites available to the public. It is for distribution to members of the AWE Local Liaison Committee (LLC) and covers activities associated with the regulation of safety at Aldermaston and Burghfield. These reports are distributed quarterly and are available also from the Internet at http://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 on 0151-951-3484/3290 .
A total of 24 NII inspectors visited the Aldermaston and Burghfield sites during the quarter. The Chief Inspector of Nuclear Installations made his annual visit to the AWE nuclear licensed sites in April 2006, and there were visits from other HSE inspectors in relation to conventional safety, and explosives. NII inspections were made on the following dates:
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:
The Chief Inspector of Nuclear Installations made his annual visit to the AWE nuclear licensed sites at Aldermaston and Burghfield. He had presentations and tours of the operational areas of a number of production and research facilities. At his meeting with the new AWE Managing Director and other Directors he stressed the importance of having early engagement with NII, delivering safety submissions to programme, and the need for progress with the facility refurbishments and new facilities as part of the AWE Site development. He also had a meeting with the AWE safety representatives where a number of issues were discussed.
AWE has carried out a recent review of its safety case process and has identified a number of issues and improvement actions. One of the issues was the need to improve integration of the safety case process and the engineering design. NII considers that AWE needs to address this issue quickly and effectively and will be discussing this with AWE. The company has taken steps to consider how best this can be done and has visited the nuclear licensee at Devonport to look at the model used for the dock refurbishment programme.
NII has developed an Integrated Intervention Strategy for AWE. A key part of this strategy is to have early engagement with the licensee on significant projects in order to ensure NII’s regulatory expectations are factored in early within the decision-making process and thereby minimise regulatory risk. NII has also developed a number of proactive projects as part of this strategy including:
These projects are in addition to NII’s continuing normal day-to-day regulatory activities.
NII is also continuing to develop its arrangements for interacting with a range of stakeholders, including MOD and other regulators, as part of its strategy. AWE has announced that it is developing an Improvement Plan with a view to reducing risk across the sites, and NII will be working with all stakeholders on its development and implementation.
A legal requirement on all nuclear licensees is that they demonstrate their emergency arrangements periodically to show that they are still effective. Such a demonstration exercise took place at Aldermaston on 28 June. The exercise was witnessed by a team from NII and MoD’s Nuclear Weapon Regulator. Whilst there were some minor issues, for example, audibility of the site PA system, at some locations, and the display of Health Physics information, AWE was judged to have given a good demonstration of its arrangements for handling emergencies. Unfortunately the local authority fire and rescue services were not available to take part in the exercise in this instance.
The PSR for the proposed enriched Uranium project has been received by NII. Specialist NII assessment is initially being carried out in the areas of criticality, active ventilation, seismic, and fault studies. Issues from this scoping assessment will be discussed with AWE to identify the need for, and extent of, further specialist assessment.
NII inspectors investigated an incident involving the spurious actuation of the criticality detection system in a Uranium production facility. The inspectors spoke to managers and other workers in the facility, the AWE instrumentation department, and the emergency response manager. Based on the information gathered and from application of HSE’s enforcement management model [1] (EMM), it was considered that enforcement action was not warranted in this case. Spurious actuation of the sensitive monitoring equipment is always a possibility; however, NII will continue to monitor such incidents to ensure that AWE continues to provide equipment appropriate to meet the design function.
An incident involving the potential exposure of workers to an unshielded radioactive sealed source in a dedicated radiography cell was investigated by NII. Although it was identified that there was a wiring fault on the indication instrumentation, when account was taken of other engineered provisions, the NII EMM indicated that enforcement action was not appropriate. AWE has put in place work to correct the wiring fault.
NII continues to undertake assessment work in support of an AWE submission on contained hydrodynamic trials. Additional work undertaken by AWE on the facility and equipment has delayed AWE requesting the Licence Instrument to resume these operations.
The Enforcement Management Model (EMM) is a framework which helps inspectors make enforcement decisions in line with the Health and Safety Commission’s (HSC) Enforcement Policy Statement (EPS).
NII continues to examine the PRS submissions for the existing Assembly/Disassembly Facility and is in discussion with AWE over the timing and scope of work packages which will be put in place to support continued operation.
NII is keen to see early completion of the new Assembly/Disassembly Facility and is in discussion with AWE and MoD to finalise the programme.
AWE is seeking NII agreement to the ongoing use of the current process for weapons disassembly. NII has asked for clarification of a number of issues in relation to this but it is expected that agreement is imminent.
1.
The Enforcement Management Model (EMM) is a framework which helps inspectors make enforcement decisions in line with the Health and Safety Commission’s (HSC) Enforcement Policy Statement (EPS).
2.
Licence Instruments are issued to acknowledge receipt of specified documents, e.g. 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.