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 URENCO (Capenhurst) Ltd Local Liaison Committee and covers activities associated with the regulation of safety at the URENCO (Capenhurst) Ltd Nuclear Licensed Site. These reports are distributed quarterly and are available also from the Internet at http://www.hse.gov.uk/nuclear/index.htm. Site Inspectors of HM Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (part of the Health and Safety Executive’s Nuclear Directorate) normally attend LLC meetings and will be happy to respond to questions raised there or subsequently by members of the LLC. Any other person wishing to inquire about matters covered by this report should contact the HSE’s, Nuclear Directorate on 0151-951-3484/3290.
Nuclear Directorate
Health and Safety Executive
Redgrave Court
Merton Road
Bootle
Merseyside
L20 7HS
The site was visited by NII inspectors on :-
Each NII Site Inspector has an inspection programme to inspect compliance of operations on the site with the 36 Nuclear Site Licence Conditions (LCs). During this quarter particular attention has been paid to compliance by the licensee to licence conditions :-
No issues were raised from the compliance inspections undertaken during this period that required formal regulatory action.
Further NII inspections of the implementation of the UCL arrangements for compliance with LC25 have been undertaken at E23, E22 & Production Planning & Logistics Dept. Overall the inspections raised no significant issues or concerns although there were a number of aspects that will be followed up during future planned inspections at other plants. UCL was able to demonstrate at E22 &E23 impressive archive facilities and systems for the storage and retrieval of information.
The UCL Site Shift Managers handover processes and procedures were discussed with the Shift Manager during an unannounced visit to the site around the evening shift changeover on Saturday 2.12.06. Overall the visit and discussions allowed further insight into the Shift Managers role and responsibilities during “silent hours” to be obtained. No significant issues or concerns were raised from the discussions during the visit.
This inspection was the latest in the series relating to the implementation of the UCL LC24 arrangements at the UCL operational plants. The inspection was arranged to sample how Operating Instructions (OIs) are actually utilised by plant operators during plant operations. Operators were observed carrying out a series of operations which are covered by several instructions. Overall the observation of the operations and associated discussions with plant operators gave a good insight into how the operators view and utilise the plant OIs. Throughout the observations the operators followed the instructions detailed in the OIs and exhibited a detailed knowledge of the content of the OIs when questioned.
The UCL “top tier” arrangements for LC28 were reviewed with UCL. Overall the current UCL LC28 arrangements were considered to generally cover the requirements listed in the NII Inspection Guidance documents. However, in a few cases the NII guidance requirements were not wholly considered, or were only implied, within the UCL arrangements. None of these deficiencies were considered significant enough to require an immediate revision of the UCL arrangements.
A meeting has been held to initially discuss a number of proposed changes to the Management Structure at UCL including the proposals for outsourcing of Information Technology (IT) support, changes to the “UCL Head of Operations” post and the setting up of new Central Technology Group (CTG). UCL agreed to keep NII informed on these proposals as they are developed.
The objective of Demonstration Emergency Exercise “Quail” was for the licensee and relevant Approved Dosimetry Service (ADS) (Sellafield-Westlakes) to provide a full demonstration of their arrangements for the collection, segregation and measurement of special accident criticality dosimetry (“criticality belts”) following a criticality incident. No significant issues/concerns were raised from the operations carried out by UCL during the exercise. The NII Specialist Inspector (Health Physics) is to write and confirm the NII observations to all the participating organisations.
Discussions were held with UCL regarding the projects to construct additional areas of raft storage of feed, product and tails cylinders on the site. The project is currently being progressed at UCL’s “commercial risk” in advance of the publication of the Pre Commencement Safety Report (PCSR) for the project which is due to be completed in early 07. NII re-confirmed to UCL that it wished to assess the Radiological Impact assessment for the additional rafts and the associated ALARP arguments.
During the report period a number of visits to plants across the site were undertaken including –
During the report period a number of miscellaneous topics were discussed with UCL including the –
During this report period UCL informed NII of the circumstances regarding an “event” relating to the storage strategy on one of the site cylinder storage areas. Raft 11/12 currently has approximately 700 single/double stacked cylinders stored on it. However the radiological assessment in the current UCL safety documentation is based on the assumption of the raft having a maximum of 500 cylinders stored on it. NII has written to UCL outlining the NII concerns in relation to this “event”. UCL stated that the recent off site surveys had not indicated any significant increase in the offsite radiation levels. The way forward proposed by UCL is to leave the “extra” cylinders on Raft 11 as their removal is not considered ALARP in terms of operator dose uptake and to compile a new safety case for Raft 11/12 operations covering the revised proposed operational strategy for the rafts. The revised safety documents should be completed in early 2007 and an increased regime of radiation surveys will be continued until the assumptions in the revised safety documentation are confirmed. UCL has set up a management investigation to investigate this “event” and UCL has stated that the investigation will extend to looking at the safety arguments for storage of cylinders on all rafts on the site.
A meeting was held with UCL to discuss the recent “cluster” of “events” that occurred during excavations across the UCL site. It was considered that UCL had investigated and reacted adequately to these events. UCL has instigated work to introduce improved procedures and to update and correct, where necessary, the site services maps. It was agreed that NII would carry out an inspection of the revised UCL excavations procedures early in Feb/March 2007.
Regulatory Actions taken during the quarter:
| Date | Description |
|---|---|
| None |
The Inspectorate has powers under the licence to issue Consents, Approvals and Directions. In addition, the Inspectorate uses Licence Instruments to issue Specifications, Acknowledgements and Agreements under either the conditions attached to the Licence, or arrangements made by UCL for complying with those conditions. The Consents/Approvals/Directions and Licence Instruments issued during the quarter were:
| Date | Type | No. | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| None |
I.K. Gibson
HM Principal Inspector (Nuclear Installations)