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 14–16 February and 15 March 2006. (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.
HASS Regulations: A meeting, attended also by HSE’s nuclear policy group, was held at the Grove Centre to discuss the application of the new High-activity Sealed Radioactive Sources and Orphan Sources Regulations 2005 to the company
NuSAC: In February, GE Healthcare Ltd gave a paper to the Health and Safety Commission’s Nuclear Safety Advisory Group. The subject was safety lessons from the 2004 takeover of the licensee (then Amersham plc) by General Electric. NuSAC noted the applicability of these lessons to the continuously changing scene nationally.
On 15 March Mike Weightman, HM Chief Inspector of Nuclear Installations, visited the headquarters of GE Healthcare to meet the licensee’s board and discuss events since the GE takeover.
Incidents: Two unusual instances of contamination in a plant handling radioactive iodine were the subject of a preliminary investigation by the site inspector, who concluded that the licensee had dealt with them appropriately. They entailed no significant doses or releases from the plant.
Before his meeting with the board, noted above, Dr Weightman visited the Grove Centre for an introduction to the site.
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 Licence Instrument No 501, agreeing to safety-related changes to the organisational structure of the licensee consequent on the replacement of the chairman and the director of safety.
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.