- Site: Sellafield
- IR number: 19-007
- Date: April 2019
- LC numbers: 7
Executive summary
Purpose of Intervention
In accordance with the Office for Nuclear Regulation’s (ONR’s) Sellafield Strategy, each year ONR performs a series of planned compliance inspections of selected licence conditions, targeted at those facilities with significant importance to nuclear safety.
One such licence condition inspection was performed to assess the Special Nuclear Materials Value Stream compliance with Sellafield Ltd’s (SL) corporate arrangements for Licence Condition (LC) 7 (Incidents on the site). Licence Condition 7 (LC7) requires SL to make and implement adequate arrangements for the notification, recording, investigation and reporting of such incidents occurring on the site.
Interventions Carried Out by ONR
I carried out a planned compliance inspection against Licence Condition 7. This comprised discussions with SL personnel, and reviews of SL records, documents and processes.
Explanation of Judgement if Safety System Not Judged to be Adequate
N/A as this was not a System Based Inspection.
Key Findings, Inspector's Opinions and Reasons for Judgements Made
From a mixture of sampling records and interviewing SL personnel I saw evidence that SNM have an adequate reporting culture for issues impacting nuclear safety. Furthermore, I found that such issues were appropriately sentenced, investigated, and had appropriate corrective actions raised, and subsequently closed.
I found that SNM had appropriate governance to ensure that investigations are undertaken in a timely manner and resulting actions completed to time. I saw evidence that SNM are making use of OPEX intelligence to drive improvement.
Conclusion of Intervention
From the evidence sampled during the inspection, I consider that SL has effectively implemented its arrangements for compliance with LC 7 across SNM (North and South) and I have assigned an inspection rating of Green (no formal action) to be appropriate for compliance against LC 7; Incidents on the site.