British Energy Generation Ltd - Dungeness B Power Station report - Q1 2009

Quarterly report for 1 January to 31 March 2009

Inspections
Routine Matters
Non Routine Matters
Regulatory Activity

Foreword

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 Dungeness SSG and covers activities associated with the regulation of safety at Dungeness B 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 SSG meetings and will respond to questions raised there by members of the SSG.

1. Inspections

The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (HMNII) Site Inspector and other inspectors visited Dungeness B on the following dates during the quarter covered by this report:

6, 7, 8 January
10, 11, 12 February
31 March

2. Routine matters

Inspections are undertaken at site as part of the process for monitoring compliance with:

The conditions attached by HSE/HMNII to the nuclear site licence;
The Health and Safety at Work etc Act (HSWA) 1974 and
Regulations made under the HSWA for example the Ionising Radiations Regulations 1999 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999.

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 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 at Dungeness B covered:

Training
Emergency arrangements
Quality assurance
Periodic safety review
Periodic shutdown

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 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.

Reactor 22 statutory outage

Reactor 22 shut down for its three yearly statutory outage at the end of June 2008. The station prepared a safety case to return the reactor to normal operational service and consent was given to restart the reactor. The reactor went critical in early January.

Periodic safety review (PSR2)

A quarterly meeting was attended by inspectors from HMNII including a Superintending Inspector to monitor station progress in completing the programme of work identified as part of its periodic safety review and HMNII's assessment of it. Some slippage in delivering the programme of improvements was noted but generally, progress was seen to be satisfactory.

3. Non-routine matters

Licensees are required to have arrangements to respond to non-routine matters and events. HMNII inspectors judge the adequacy of the licensee's response including actions taken to implement any necessary improvements.As part of their planned inspection site inspectors examine safety-related events that have occurred and the Licensee's response to them. There was one matter of particular note during the current period.

Reactor 21 autotrip 02 January 2009

At 05:30 on 01 January 2009, coolant pressure dp/dt channel B safety circuit went into trip on approach to low margin. This is a guardline parameter, the guardlines operating on a two out of four logic on any single parameter. As required by Tech. Specs, the unit was manually placed into half trip at 0557 hours. The specialist resources required to address the fault were not available on 01 January so channel B remained in trip throughout that day. At 0801 hours on 02 January the unit tripped. Coolant channel pressure dp/dt channel D had tripped and this caused the reactor to autotrip. All post trip sequencing and cooling operated successfully. HMNII investigated this event and as a result, areas for improvement in the methods of completing station logs have been identified.

4. Regulatory activity

Under Health and Safety legislation HMNII Site Inspectors, and other HSE Inspectors, may issue formal documents to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements. Under nuclear site licence conditions HSE/HMNII 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 Licence Instruments were issued to the licensee during the quarter:-

Licence instrument No 526 was issued in the period agreeing to the Introduction of machine brace fuel into the reactors.

No enforcement Notices were issued during the quarter.

Changes to HSE's Nuclear Directorate

In early 2008 the Government initiated a review into the UK's nuclear safety regulatory regime, led by Dr Tim Stone. The recommendations and the UK's Government response were published at the end of January 2009. One of the major recommendations is the decision by Government to establish the Health and Safety Executive's (HSE) Nuclear Directorate (ND) as a Statutory Corporation under the auspices of the HSE.

The creation of this new, autonomous body, (which will continue to incorporate the Office for Civil Nuclear Security and the UK Safeguards Office) will facilitate a more sustainable approach to regulating nuclear safety and security within a rapidly changing global nuclear environment and recruitment of high calibre of staff within a hardening market place for highly specialised skills.

The restructuring will not change the substance or standards of regulation or compromise the independence of the nuclear regulatory body, and will not affect the decisions it takes or the international obligations the Government requires it to meet.

Enabling work continues for the initial scoping and planning of the work-streams and programmes necessary for the Statutory Corporation to come into being from April 2010. This project has required the temporary enhancement of ND's senior management capability in order to deliver existing regulatory work and to create the Statutory Corporation.