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 Hartlepool Local Community Liaison Council and covers activities associated with the regulation of safety at Hartlepool Power Station. These reports are distributed quarterly and are also available on the HSE’s web site at http://www.hse.gov.uk/nuclear/llc/index.htm. Site inspectors of HM Nuclear Installations Inspectorate usually attend LCLC meetings and will respond to questions raised there by members of the LCLC. Any other person wishing to enquire about matters covered by this report may contact the HSE’s Nuclear Directorate on 0151-951-3484/3290.
Nuclear Safety Directorate
Health and Safety Executive
Redgrave Court
Merton Road
Bootle
Merseyside
L20 7HS
The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) Site Inspector made inspections on the following dates during the quarter: -
Hartlepool Power Station9, 10, October 2007
16, 17 October 2007
13, 14 November 2007
4, 5, 6 December 2007
Additional NII inspectors visited the site during the Reactor 1 outage in early October to inspect topics associated with their specialist skills and knowledge.
Inspections are undertaken at site as part of the process for monitoring compliance with:
This entails monitoring licensee’s actions on the site in relation to incidents, operations, maintenance, projects, modifications, safety case changes and any other matters which may affect safety. The licensees are required to make and implement adequate arrangements under the conditions attached to the licence in order to ensure legal compliance. Inspections seek to judge both the adequacy of these arrangements and their implementation. In this period routine inspections of Hartlepool Power Station covered:
Emergency preparedness.
Examination, Maintenance, Inspection and Testing.
Periodic shutdown
Management of operations including control and supervision.
Incidents on the site.
In general the arrangements made and implemented by Hartlepool Power Station in response to safety requirements were deemed to be adequate in the areas inspected. However, where improvements were considered necessary, satisfactory commitments to address the issues were made by or are being sought from the licensee, and the site inspector will monitor progress during future visits. Where necessary, formal regulatory enforcement action will be taken to ensure that appropriate remedial measures are implemented to reasonably practicable timescales.
A Level 1 emergency exercise was scheduled for early December 07. Due to pressures on the station personnel associated with the BCU recovery project and the dual reactor outage, the site inspector allowed this exercise to be deferred until March 08, but required a demonstration of the arrangements to muster all staff on site. The demonstration of the site muster was competed to an adequate standard in December 07.
A start-up meeting for Reactor 1 was held in October close to the scheduled end of the outage. At the meeting, a number of actions were raised most of which have subsequently been addressed to a satisfactory standard. The licensee has not requested an Approval to the restart of Reactor 1 because of the discovery of a failed prestressing wire in a Reactor 1 Boiler Closure Unit (BCU), instead shutting down Reactor 2 and initiating the BCU Recovery Project.
Licensees are required to have arrangements to respond to non-routine matters and events. NII inspectors judge the adequacy of the licensee’s response including actions taken to implement any necessary improvements. Matters of particular note considered during the current period include the following.
Further to the Boiler Closure Unit inspection results reported in the previous quarter, the continuing inspections during the Reactor 1 outage revealed a broken prestressing wire. As this undermined the BCU safety case, the licensee shut down the operating pod boiler reactors at Hartlepool and Heysham 1 and reported the event to NII, categorised as INES 1. A BCU recovery project team has been established and is considering options for repair and/or strengthening whilst further inspections are undertaken. NII are monitoring developments within this project and have established a regulatory hold on the re-start of both Hartlepool reactors.
In the 1st January 2007 to 31st March 2007 report, an event was described when a fire alarm annunciation system had four Maintenance Schedule routines suspended incorrectly and the maintenance was therefore not completed successfully. The site inspector investigated the station’s response to this event and concluded that he was content that the company reported and investigated the event in accordance with the arrangements to notify, record, investigate and report incidents and put in place a suitable corrective action plan to minimise the likelihood of a reoccurrence.
In the report for 1st July to 30th September 2007, an event was reported where cooling CO2 gas flows were not in accordance with the safety case. The event was reported promptly by the station and investigated to find the causes and underlying root causes. A corrective action plan was developed and is well under way in its implementation to minimise the potential for a recurrence of this or similar events. The site inspector investigated the stations’ response to this event and is satisfied it has been suitable and sufficient.
Under Health and Safety legislation NII Site Inspectors, and other HSE Inspectors, may issue formal documents to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements. Under nuclear site licence conditions HSE/NII issues regulatory documents, which either permission an activity or require some form of action to be taken; these are collectively termed Licence Instruments (LI). In addition inspectors may issue enforcement notices to secure improvements to safety.
One LI was issued to the licensee during the quarter: -
Licence Instrument 522 issuing a Specification under Licence Condition 25(4) to implement the High-Activity Sealed Radioactive Sources and Orphan Sources Regulations 2005.
No enforcement notices were issued during the reporting period.