NII statement regarding its revised strategy for regulating decommissioning at UKAEA's Winfrith and Harwell sites under Licence Condition 35

1. NII regulates nuclear safety by attaching conditions to nuclear site licences. It regulates compliance with such licence conditions (LCs) by inspecting licence condition compliance arrangements that have been drawn up by licensees. One such licence condition is LC 35, which relates to decommissioning.
2. During 2006/7 UKAEA drew up decommissioning work programmes for Winfrith and Harwell which NII judged to be largely compliant with the requirements of LC 35. These programmes were declared by the company in the published Lifetime Plan 06/07 (LTP 06/07). In 2007, UKAEA departed from LTP 06/07 without providing an adequate demonstration that their outcome remained compliant with site licence requirements.
3. In early 2008 NII responded to this, in accordance with its Enforcement Policy Statement and published guidance to its inspectors, by exercising its powers under LC 35(3) and Approving those parts of the LTP 06/07 decommissioning plan which relate to the higher-hazard plant areas. The aim was to require UKAEA to either return to the decommissioning timescales set out in LTP 06/07 or to justify any deferral.
4. NII has since undertaken a review of its strategy for regulating decommissioning under LC35 at all its sites. This review recognises that the Energy Act 2004 gave the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) specific responsibility for securing the decommissioning and cleaning-up of designated nuclear installations.
5. Although the review has yet to be completed, 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 NDA to allocate funding for individual decommissioning projects in the light of national affordability and competing priorities across its estate.
6. In particular, it is for NDA to target expenditure to secure strategic objectives provided that licensees have completed risk assessments and adequately addressed implications for safety prior to significant changes in funding allocation.
7. In due course, under this revised strategy:
   1. NII will confirm that licensees' decommissioning programmes, prepared under LC 35 (2), are underpinned by adequate safety cases as required by LC 23 (1).
   2. NII will regulate decommissioning under licensee's arrangements prepared under LC 35 (1).  These will require licensees to provide NII with a notification of, and safety justification for, any significant variation from their decommissioning programmes and, where relevant, seek NII's agreement to such changes.
   3. NII may decide to Approve the licensee's arrangements.
8. We are scheduled to relicense the Harwell and Winfrith sites from UKAEA Ltd to Research Sites Restoration Limited (RSRL) on 2 February 2009. In the light of our developing strategy outlined above, our existing Approvals of parts of LTP 06/07 will not be carried forward to the new site licences to be issued to RSRL.
9. This approach will seek to focus a proportionate level of regulatory attention on ensuring the continued safety of higher-hazard facilities. 

January 2009