The Civil Engineering and External Hazards (CEEH) Specialism consists of a team of engineers and scientists who consider a range of safety and security features on UK nuclear sites and the challenges they will need to withstand throughout their operational life.
Civil engineering features often provide the most fundamental safety function on nuclear sites, including shielding from radiation and containment/confinement of nuclear materials. Most of the passive security preventing access to and protecting nuclear materials are also provided by civil engineering features. Civil structures are usually the first elements with a safety and security function to be created on a new nuclear site and the last to be removed at the end of a facility’s life.
Our specialist civil engineering inspectors consider the design, construction, operation, maintenance and decommissioning of these features at nuclear sites. Our inspectors seek evidence that these features will provide safety and security functions with very high reliability.
Some of the greatest potential challenges to nuclear safety and security are created by external hazards, which are defined as those hazards (natural or man-made) which originate externally from the site. This includes events such as earthquakes, flooding, storms and aircraft crash, many of which have the potential to adversely affect all safety and security features on a nuclear site and beyond the site boundary at the same time.
Our external hazards inspectors consider the range and severity of events that sites have been designed to safely and securely withstand. Our inspectors expect the industry to consider extreme events, far beyond those commonly experienced in the UK, together with combinations of events which could undermine safety or security at nuclear sites.
Climate change effects are also taken into account by our inspectors, with a range of climate change projections considered when making judgements on the safety of nuclear sites.