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 Chapelcross Site Stakeholder Group (SSG) and covers activities associated with the regulation of safety at Chapelcross Power Station. These reports are distributed quarterly and are also available on the HSE’s website at http://www.hse.gov.uk/nuclear/llc/index.htm . Site Inspectors of HM Nuclear Installations Inspectorate normally attend SSG meetings and will be happy to respond to any questions raised there or subsequently by members of the SSG. Any other person wishing to inquire about matters covered by this report should contact the HSE’s, Nuclear Directorate on 0151 951 3484/3290.
Nuclear 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:
Other NII staff visited the site during the quarter to inspect readiness for defuelling and the site’s electrical systems. An NII team was in attendance to witness Level 1 Demonstration Emergency Exercise India on 30 April 2008.
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 licensee is 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 Chapelcross covered:
In general the arrangements made and implemented by Chapelcross 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.
Level 1 Emergency Exercise India was held on 30 April 2008 to fulfil the requirement for an annual demonstration of the site’s emergency arrangements to NII. The NII team that witnessed the exercise found that it was not an adequate demonstration of the arrangements. The site muster system failed and the site was unable to complete a manual muster for a significant period. The licensee was therefore unable to account for all personnel on site in a timely manner. NII therefore placed three requirements on the site:
The first of these was achieved on 2 May 2008, 2 days after Exercise India, and the second on 29 May 2008. Whilst the manual muster was adequately demonstrated, NII observed that further work needed to be done to develop the arrangements for this activity and therefore requires a further demonstration of the manual muster before the end of 2008. The further full scope exercise will be held in the autumn.
As part of the process for providing agreement to the start of defuelling of Reactor 1, a team from the NII visited site on 1 May 2008 to inspect the extent of readiness for defuelling. The team concluded that the site was largely ready, although it did identify some matters that needed to be resolved before NII will be able to issue its agreement.
At the end of the reporting period, the Periodic Safety Review was reported to still be on target for delivery by end August 2008.
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. There are no items of particular note during the current reporting period.
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 requires 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:
No enforcement notices were issued during the reporting period.