Executive summary
Date(s) of inspection:
Aim of inspection
This was a planned inspection of EDF Energy Nuclear Generation Ltd’s (NGL’s) Hartlepool nuclear power station, undertaken as part of the intervention strategy for the Operating Facilities Division of the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR). The inspection is in accordance with the planned inspection programme contained in the Hartlepool Integrated Intervention Strategy for 2023/2024.
This inspection was against licence condition (LC) 30 – Periodic Shutdown.
The purpose of LC 30 is to ensure that for the purpose of enabling any examination, inspection, maintenance or testing of any plant or process to take place, that any such plant or process is shut down in accordance with the requirements of its plant maintenance schedule referred to in LC 28.
Subject(s) of inspection
- LC 30 - Periodic shutdown - Rating: GREEN
Key findings, inspector's opinions and reasons for judgement made
This inspection targeted Hartlepool's arrangements for statutory outage preparation. EDF NGL's arrangments for outage preparation contain a series of milestones that should be completed prior to a statutory outage commencing. We sampled evidence associated with the 2023 statutory outage preparations for milestone closure, changing of milestone dates and also discussed operational experience from recent outages. From the evidence sampled we were satisfied that EDF NGL had closed out milestones in compliance with their arrangements and that Hartlepool was taking appropriate action to address a weakness that had been identified in the arrangements. We were also of the opinion that learning from previous outages was being implemented at Hartlepool.
During the inspection we also sampled the role profiles and training status of key team members of the Hartlepool outage organisation. From the evidence sampled we were content that team members training was up to date.
Conclusion
Based on the discussions and evidence sampled, we considered that the licensee has adequately implemented its arrangements for compliance with LC 30. We identified a number of regulatory observations during the inspection but these are not significant and we therefore judged that an inspection rating of GREEN (no formal action) is merited.