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 Harwell Chilton Campus Local Stakeholder Group (LSG) and covers activities associated with the regulation of safety at the UKAEA Harwell licensed site. These reports are distributed quarterly. Site Inspectors of HM Nuclear Installations Inspectorate normally attend LSG meetings and will be happy to respond to questions raised there by members of the LSG. Any other person wishing to inquire about matters covered by this report should contact the HSE, Nuclear Safety Directorate Information Centre on 0151-951-3484.
Nuclear Directorate
Health and Safety Executive
Redgrave Court
Merton Road
Bootle
Merseyside
L20 7HS
Work on the proposed Harwell/Winfrith reorganisation into Research Sites Restoration Ltd (RSRL) continued to be the focus of the Site Inspector’s attention. He visited the site on 3 occasions during the quarter as follows:
Other interactions with the Licensee were progressed by videoconference.
The site inspector was accompanied for parts of these visits by the Superintending Inspector who manages the NII’s site inspection team covering regulation of a number of nuclear licensed sites including Harwell and Winfrith. They were joined by two specialist inspectors in October to observe the site’s annual demonstration of their emergency arrangements and by a project inspector in December to review progress in preparations for relicensing.
Following a review of NII resources, the site inspector moved to a new role within NII towards the end of the reporting period. Arrangements are in hand for appointing his successor.
NII regulates nuclear safety by attaching conditions to nuclear site licences. It regulates compliance with such licence conditions (LCs). Inspections and discussions over the period dealt with arrangements under licence conditions covering such topics as management of organisational change, decommissioning, emergency arrangements, plant/process commissioning and control/supervision of operations.
Further information on matters of interest is provided in the following sections of this report.
An NII inspection team attended the site in early October to witness an emergency exercise. This provided an adequate demonstration of the site emergency arrangements. The licensee coped well with a challenging scenario, with commendable individual and team contributions. As is normal on such occasions, scope for improvement was identified in some aspects and these are being addressed by the licensee.
Discussions were held with the licensee concerning their proposal to start active commissioning of a waste retrieval machine. A number of safety improvements had been implemented following NII’s assessment of the licensee’s original intentions. NII subsequently agreed to the start of active commissioning, which will enable cans of legacy waste to be recovered from storage tubes for treatment under close managerial control. Further agreement will be required in due course to permit routine operation of the facility.
As previously mentioned, NII is currently reviewing its strategy for regulating decommissioning programmes, including those at Harwell and Winfrith, under the requirements of Licence Condition 35. Among other things, this provides the option for HSE/NII to approve such parts of the licensee’s decommissioning programmes as HSE/NII may specify.
NII will continue to focus on ensuring adequate safety during decommissioning and will judge the adequacy of decommissioning and radioactive waste proposals against relevant good practice. However, subject to an adequate safety case being in place and the adoption of relevant good practice, it is for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) to allocate funding for individual decommissioning projects in the light of national affordability and competing priorities across its estate. Accordingly our existing Approvals of parts of the licensee’s decommissioning programme known as LTP 06/07 will not be carried forward to the new site licences to be issued to RSRL.
Further details are available in NII’s statement regarding its revised strategy for regulating decommissioning at UKAEA's Winfrith and Harwell sites under Licence Condition 35 at http://www.hse.gov.uk/nuclear/winharlc35enf.htm
Licence Condition 3 includes a requirement that licensees shall not let or grant any licence for parts of the licensed site without the consent of HSE/NII. A number of such consents were issued during the period.
Meetings were held at Harwell in October and December, in conjunction with inspectors from the Environment Agency, with a view to progressing outstanding issues in preparation for the relicensing of the Harwell and Winfrith sites from UKAEA to RSRL. The meeting in December followed up issues from an earlier joint shadow readiness and engineering capability inspection which was undertaken by a team of NII specialist inspectors. We found that the licensee had since made good progress in providing increased clarity and improving their arrangements. We concluded that the shadow organisation was ready for relicensing on 2 February 2009 subject to the closing out of a few remaining actions.
NII has powers under Nuclear Site Licence Number 44 to issue Consents, Approvals and Directions. In addition, NII can issue Notifications, Specifications, Acknowledgements and Agreements under the conditions attached to the Licence, or under arrangements made by UKAEA for complying with those conditions.
A new numbering system was introduced on 1 October 2004 for site licence actions, and all such actions are now called Licence Instruments.
The following Licence Instrument was issued during the period: