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 Oldbury Site Stakeholder Group and covers activities associated with the regulation of safety at Oldbury Nuclear 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 Site Stakeholder Group meetings and will respond to any questions raised there by the members of the group. Any other person wishing to inquire about matters covered by this report should contact the HSE, Nuclear Directorate on 0151-951-3484.
Nuclear Directorate
Health and Safety Executive
Redgrave Court
Merton Road
Bootle
Merseyside
L20 7HS
The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate Site Inspector made inspections on the following dates during the quarter:
Specialist inspectors carried out inspections on the following dates during the quarter:
Inspections at Oldbury 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/operators 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 (site/station) covered:
In general the arrangements made and implemented by the site 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 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 is currently assessing the graphite core safety case and has had a number of meetings with the licensee. NII has been provided with further information in support of the case. The graphite safety case for both reactors refers to core irradiation limits rather than any generation end dates.
To support the graphite safety case the licensee has submitted a safety case for installation of a fuel integrity monitoring system. NII has assessed the submission and a Licence Instrument has been issued ‘Agreeing’ to the proposal. The licensee proposes to install FIMS on both reactors.
This reactor is currently shutdown, a few items concerning the graphite safety case need to be resolved prior to issue of a ‘Consent’ to Reactor 1 start up. In the mean time, the licensee has continued with camera inspections of the graphite bricks, and no findings have been noted, which affect the Reactor 1 graphite safety case.
Following the completion of Reactor 2 graphite core safety case assessment, NII was content with continued operation of Reactor 2. Prior to Reactor 2 returning to service, 100% of graphite bricks of fuel channels located in the flattened region of the core were inspected, and no findings were noted, which affect Reactor 2 graphite safety case. The licensee has agreed to undertake a programme of further inspections, in the event of any future full power trips. NII is currently content with the continued operation of reactor 2, in accordance with the graphite core irradiation limits justified in the safety case. Reactor 2 was manually shutdown in a controlled manner on 26th July 2008 to investigate a refuelling problem, the reactor returned to service on 18th of August 2008.
Following the discovery of corrosion damage to Turbine 2 in December 2007, the turbine was repaired and successfully tested at the end of March 2008. A safety case covering operation of turbines and secondary systems was submitted to the NII, assessed and was found to be acceptable. Prior to the recent shutdown, reactor 2 was operating with turbine 1, in a crossover configuration. Reactor 2 was returned to service on 18th of August 2008 with turbine 2.
NII has been formally informed that Oldbury is progressing with its plans to generate beyond 31st of December 2008. The licensee has submitted a safety case which is currently being assessed.
Oldbury Level 1 emergency exercise was held on 16th of July 2008. The exercise was observed by a team from the NII, and it was judged to be an adequate demonstration of the emergency arrangements, there were many excellent practices and features demonstrated in the exercise. The exercise was challenging, as it demonstrated the station’s response to the unavailability of the normal control centres.
Licensees are required to have arrangements to respond to non-routine matters and events. NII inspectors judge the adequacy of the licensee’s/operators response including actions taken to implement any necessary improvements. Matters of particular note considered during the current period include the following.
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 Oldbury, 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.
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.
Three Licence Instruments were issued to the licensee during the quarter: