British Energy Generation Ltd - Dungeness B Power Station report - Q3 2009

Quarterly report for 1 July 2009 to 30 September 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.

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:

13, 14, 15, 20, 21, 22 July
03. 04, 05, 06, 18, 19, 20 August
02, 03, 07, 08, 09, 10, 15, 16, 22, 23, 24 September

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 were carried out at Dungeness B as part of the R21 statutory outage, which commenced on 9 July 2009, in the following areas:

Quality Assurance
Modifications or experiments on existing plant
Maintenance, examination, inspection and testing
Periodic shutdown
Outage management

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. On 29 June a fuel plug unit failed to bumplatch to a new fuel stringer due to the presence of foreign material (rubber matting). This resulted in the coupling between the plug unit and the fuel stringer not latching correctly and therefore it could not be guaranteed that the fuel stringer would not fall and possibly injure personnel. A decision was made to lessen the consequences of a dropped load by injecting liquid foam into the fuel carrier, below the stringer. The station did not recognise that the foam would present a potential criticality risk to the fuel and, as such, was a breach of the station’s criticality arrangements. This event was classified as INES 2 by British Energy. This incident resulting in a suspended fuel assembly was reported to HMNII on 30 June 2009 and the incident involving the injection of foam was reported on 03 July 2009. HMNII commenced a formal investigation on 13 July 2009. This investigation is being carried out in accordance with HSE’s Operating Procedures and is currently ongoing.

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.

There was one Licence Instruments issued to the licensee during the quarter: