HSE publishes criterion for delicensing nuclear sites

E107:05 16 August 2005

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has today published its criterion for delicensing parts of, or entire sites licensed under the Nuclear Installations Act 1965.

The policy statement, 'HSE Criterion for Delicensing Nuclear Sites' forms the basis from which HSE can establish, from its own assessment, the licensee's evidence and information from other regulators, that any residual radioactivity on a nuclear site, additional to the natural background, represents 'no danger'. Once the licensee demonstrates it can meet HSE's 'no danger' criterion, HSE will be able to make a decision on delicensing all or part of the site.

The requirement for licensees to demonstrate 'no danger' is a legal duty imposed by the Nuclear Installations Act 1965. HSE believes the most helpful way to define 'no danger' is to present it in terms of an assessed numerical risk to human life, rather than simply using a vague phrase such as "very low risk".

In summary, HSE's requirement for establishing 'no danger' when considering a delicensing application is "A demonstration that any residual radioactivity, above background radioactivity, which remains on the site, which may or may not have arisen from licensable activities, will lead to a risk of death to an individual using the site for any reasonably foreseeable purpose, of no greater than one in a million per year".

With an expected increase in requests for delicensing, HSE considers that the publication of a policy statement setting out its interpretation of 'no danger' is timely, and will help make regulatory decision-making more transparent.

The policy statement, 'HSE Criterion for Delicensing Nuclear Sites', (available in English and Welsh) can be accessed on HSE's website at: www.hse.gov.uk/nuclear/delicensing.pdf [65kb] and

www.hse.gov.uk/nuclear/delicensingwelsh.pdf [67kb] respectively.

Notes to editors

• The legislation governing the licensing of nuclear sites in the UK is the Nuclear Installations Act 1965, as amended.
• Sections 3(6) and 5(3) of the Act require that before allowing all or part of a site to be delicensed, HSE must be satisfied that "there has ceased to be any danger from ionising radiations from anything on the site or, as the case may be, on that part thereof".
• Several sites (and part sites) have already been delicensed over the last 30 years, but always on a case-by-case basis.
• The Health and Safety Commission (HSC) consulted on HSE's proposed policy statement between May-August 2004 and the statement was slightly modified as a result of comments received. A summary of the main points made and HSE's response can be viewed in Annex A to HSC paper HSC/05/30 at the following website address: www.hse.gov.uk/aboutus/meetings/hscarchive/2005/260705/c30a.pdf [25kb]
• With an expected increase in requests for delicensing, HSE considers that the publication of a policy statement that interprets the 'no danger' criterion is now necessary for transparency and to enable HSE to make demonstrably consistent assessments of delicensing applications.

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