- Site: Sellafield
- IR number: 19-160
- Date: January 2020
- LC numbers: 7
Executive summary
The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) undertakes all regulatory interactions with Sellafield Limited (SL, the site licensee) against a strategy defined by the ONR Sellafield Programme. In accordance with the strategy, a Licence Condition (LC) compliance inspection against LC7 (incidents on the site) was carried out on the Pile Fuel Storage Pond (PFSP) facility, a facility which is in the process of retrieving nuclear fuel and waste currently stored in skips within the ponds.
This planned intervention specifically inspected implementation of SL’s site-wide arrangements and local specific arrangements under LC7.
Interventions Carried Out by ONR
Licence Condition 7 (LC 7) states that the licensee shall make and implement adequate arrangements for the notification, recording, investigation and reporting of such incidents occurring on the site:
The inspection, comprised discussions with SL staff and examination of the records associated with the notifying, recording, investigating and reporting by the licensee from incidents occurring within the PFSP facility. It focused on the following areas:
- The arrangements for raising, sentencing and investigating condition reports (CRs).
- The competencies required for the CR owners and performance improvement (PI) profession
- Analysis and trending of CRs
- Feedback of improvements within the facility
Explanation of Judgement if Safety System Not Judged to be Adequate
This was not a system based inspection and is therefore not applicable.
Key Findings, Inspector's Opinions and Reasons for Judgements Made
No matters were identified as requiring immediate regulatory attention whilst conducting the compliance inspection of LC 7.
We examined evidence of the licensee’s compliance with its arrangements for LC 7 and, on the basis of the inspection sample; I consider that the licensee is broadly compliant with its duties under LC 7, noting the following minor observations.
The local escalation process and hierarchy for reporting incidents was not clearly articulated by some condition report owners. The licensee accepted the need to brief condition report owners on these processes to ensure clarity.
An opportunity to improve SL’s arrangements in relation to training for the effective sentencing of incidents was identified for consideration. This inspection focussed on the implementation of the Sellafield Ltd. arrangements therefore this observation has been discussed with the ONR corporate inspector for Sellafield, who will consider this observation as part of routine regulatory business of Sellafield Ltd. arrangements.