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 Heysham Power Stations’ Local Community Liaison Council (LCLC) and covers activities associated with the regulation of safety at Heysham 1 & 2 Nuclear Power Stations. 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 (NII) 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.
Nuclear Directorate
Health and Safety Executive
Redgrave Court
Merton Road
Bootle
Merseyside
L20 7HS
The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) Site Inspectors and other inspectors made inspections at Heysham on the following dates during the quarter:-
| October 2008 | 1, 6 & 16 |
|---|---|
| November 2008 | 4, 5, 11, 12, 18 & 21 |
| December 2008 | 9, 11, 18 & 22 |
| October 2008 | 1, 6, 7, 23 & 24 |
|---|---|
| November 2008 | 10, 11, 13, 19, 20, 21, 27 & 28 |
| December 2008 | 8 & 9 |
Inspections at Site: 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 on site covered:
In general the arrangements made and implemented by the stations 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 inspectors will monitor progress during future visits. Where necessary, formal regulatory intervention action may be taken to ensure that appropriate remedial measures are implemented to reasonably practicable timescales.
As previously reported, the Heysham 1 reactors remain shutdown. A Boiler Closure Unit recovery project is still on-going and the issue continues to receive close scrutiny by NII. As regards the regulatory holds still in place for the restart of both reactors, NII are currently considering the BE requests received in December 2008 for Agreement to the Heysham 1 BCU Long Term Safety Case and the Heysham 1 Reactor 1 BCU Return to Service Safety Case (the two outstanding regulatory holds on Heysham 1 Reactor 1 return to service).
Reactor 7 was shut down in September 2008 for its triennial periodic maintenance shutdown. During this period, the Licensee conducted maintenance activities in accordance with the plant’s Maintenance Schedule, together with inspections to support the station safety case and to comply with statutory requirements and implemented modifications and other remedial work requiring a reactor outage. This included a large replacement programme of auxiliary cooling pipes using high density poly-ethylene pipe-work. A formal Start- Up meeting was held with Station managers on 24 October where Station presented the findings from its shutdown work to NII. Inspections by specialist NII inspectors did not reveal any significant shortcomings in the arrangements and conduct of outage activities. Following successful completion of all necessary outage work NII granted Consent to BE to start up the reactor on 10 November 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. Matters of particular note considered during the period include the following:
In December, a control valve shut spuriously affecting the flow to one of the main boilers. The reactor protection equipment sensed changes to coolant temperature and automatically shut down reactor 7. An investigation into the circumstances surrounding this event uncovered faulty control and instrumentation equipment, which has been replaced. Station also undertook some additional work that needed the plant to be shut down to complete. NII was content with Station’s response to this incident.
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 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.
Two LI were issued to Heysham during the quarter: -
No enforcement notices were issued during the reporting period.