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 Barrow-in-Furness Local Liaison committee (LLC) and covers activities associated with the regulation of nuclear safety at BAE SYSTEMS Marine Limited (BAESM). These reports are distributed quarterly.
Site Inspectors of HM Nuclear Installations Inspectorate normally attend LLC meetings and will be happy to respond to questions raised there or subsequently by members of the LLC. Any other 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 put onto the HSE Website at hse.gov.uk/nuclear/index.htm.The majority of sites inspected by HM Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII), a part of the Health and Safety Executive, are licensed by NII under the Nuclear Installations Act 1965 (as amended). This report summarises the inspection and regulatory activities associated with the Barrow-in-Furness licensed site. In accordance with the HSE commitments to open government, this report will also be placed on the HSE Website.
Visits are made to the site for the purpose of undertaking routine plant and project inspections or attending formal meetings with site management or safety representatives. Routine inspections by NII are undertaken primarily to check compliance with licence conditions made under the Nuclear Installations Act, but are also made against provisions of the Health & Safety at Work Act 1974, and regulations made under that Act such as the Ionising Radiations Regulations 1999. The site inspector visited site on:
The Chief Inspector of Nuclear Installations visited site on 12 April 2007, the Deputy Chief Inspector on 8 June 2007, the Superintending Inspector on 17 April 2007 and other NII inspectors on:
Matters covered in this section are those being pursued with the site as part of ongoing site inspection activity and dialogue including project work and any generic or topical work relevant to all licensees.
As part of the routine inspection programme for the site, NII inspectors check compliance with licence conditions made under the Nuclear Installations Act and other regulations such as the Ionising Radiation Regulations 1999.
Inspectors from NII and the Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator jointly inspected BAE Systems’ arrangements for:
Programmes of existing work to rationalise, modernise and improve the arrangements were examined and progress confirmed as satisfactory. Any new opportunities for improvement identified during the inspections, and the actions necessary to achieve them, were discussed and agreed with BAE Systems.
The risk assessments and contingency plans for the ceremonies associated with the naming and launch of Astute on 8 June 2007 were discussed. They were considered to provide the necessary assurance that appropriate standards of nuclear and conventional safety would be sustained, and this was successfully demonstrated on the day.
NII has also requested the licensee to consider a range of safety performance indicators (SPIs) as part of a project being undertaken across all licensed sites. BAE Systems staff attended a joint NII and Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator (DNSR) led seminar to introduce the concept of SPIs and it is expected that the licensee will submit a proposal for the Barrow licensed site in the forthcoming quarter.
Matters involving NII’s response to incidents/events and to non-routine issues arising from operation of the site are covered in this section together with the outcome of any special/team inspections, investigations or audits.
Initial enquiries into the circumstances leading to two events that were reported during the period were begun. The first event involved inadequate accounting and storage of detectors containing very small amounts of radioactive material that will be used to measure reactor power, while the second involved two persons remaining within an exclusion (controlled) area during radiography. Although no one was harmed or received any increased radiation dose, BAE Systems may have contravened the law on a number of counts. The enquiries are ongoing, but it is expected that their outcome will be reported in the next quarter’s report.
After considering information collected during inspections and site visits, the NII and DNSR decided on the need to undertake a joint, reactive inspection to determine the adequacy of BAE Systems’ arrangements for compliance with licence condition 7, Incidents on the Site, and in particular those for operational feedback and learning from experience. In order to make the most effective use of resources, it was decided that NII and DNSR would combine with an inspection that had already been programmed to be undertaken by BAE Systems’ inspectors from its Nuclear Safety Regulation Department in June 2007. The inspection revealed significant deficiencies in the compliance arrangements and NII and DNSR expect BAE Systems to undertake a systematic review to identify the improvements required to achieve compliance and to produce an action plan for their implementation for consideration by the regulators by the end of October 2007.
HMNII issues formal regulatory documents called licence instruments where these are called for under conditions attached to the nuclear site licence. Regulatory responsibility for authorising discharges and disposal of radioactive wastes from the sites lies with the Environment Agency.
Regulatory activity during the quarter was limited to the reported inspection activities and no formal regulatory documents were issued by NII for the Barrow-in-Furness site.
Nuclear Safety Directorate
Health and Safety Executive
Redgrave Court
Merton Road
Bootle
Merseyside
L20 7HS