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. 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.
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:
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.
NII attended the site’s Annual Review of Safety on 14 August 2008. NII concluded that the report for the review was comprehensive and that the presentations at the review meeting were an accurate and concise summary of the review.
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 and required the site to conduct a further full scope Level 1 Exercise. In response to this, a team from NII witnessed Level 1 Emergency Exercise Julie on 16 September 2008. The team found that this exercise did provide an adequate demonstration of the site’s emergency arrangements.
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 were no items of particular note during the reporting period.
NDA's competition strategy called for Magnox Electric Limited to be split into two Site Licence Companies: Magnox North Limited and Magnox South Limited. This split took place on 1 October 2008, when Magnox North Limited became the nuclear site licence holder for Chapelcross, Hunterston A, Oldbury, Trawsfynydd and Wylfa and Magnox South Limited became the nuclear site licence holder for Berkeley, Bradwell, Dungeness A, Hinkley Point A and Sizewell A.
To achieve this split HSE has been working closely with Magnox Electric Limited, NDA, other Government Departments and other regulators (particularly EA and SEPA) for over two years. The project has delivered improvements in a number of areas.
One of these improvements is that each site, including Chapelcross, has had to develop new arrangements to control its decommissioning programme. These give HSE greater regulatory control over changes to the programme where they have a significant impact on hazard reduction on site. For the most significant proposed programme changes the site will have to send a formal submission to NII providing a full safety justification for the proposed change and then will not be able to alter the programme until HSE has provided a formal permission.
As part of a benchmarking exercise across a number of Magnox sites, a team from NII, accompanied by a contractor, inspected the licensee’s inspection of civil works and other structures. Whilst the team found that the structures were in good order, it also found that the site needs to significantly improve its arrangements for inspection. A programme for improving the arrangements has been agreed.
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.