Heysham 2 - Inspection ID: 52349

The aim of the intervention was to inspect compliance against site licence condition 11 (emergency arrangements) at EDF Energy Nuclear Generation Ltd.’s Heysham 2 power station. The inspection is in accordance with ONR’s planned integrated intervention strategy for the site and focused on the governance and oversight of emergency arrangements including training.

 

ONR technical inspection guide NS-INSP-GD-011 Issue 7.1 ‘LC11 - On-site Emergency Arrangements’

We sampled the licensee's corporate and local arrangements for governance and oversight of its emergency arrangements and interviewed a variety of personnel including the emergency preparedness engineer, training lead, maintenance manager and simulator instructor. We found that the local arrangements provided an adequate structure of governance and oversight, with evidence of effective cross-functional engagement at all levels of the organisation and support from the station management.

 

We identified some minor shortfalls associated with the written local arrangements. Currently although the station has effective oversight and governance of emergency arrangements, these differ from the written arrangements. For example not all of the required governance sub-group meetings are taking place at the specified frequencies and we have raised a level 4 regulatory issue to bring them both into alignment.

 

Although the data provided to the EPE provides the necessary information to determine the extent of training compliance, the format of the data requires a degree of manipulation. The training lead explained that the degree of oversight required and the appropriate data to demonstrate organisational capability was being reviewed to further enhance the quality of the information provided. We have raised a further level 4 regulatory issue to ensure that this is resolved.

 

We sampled a task to training matrix for the simulator showing continuation training for operator safety case claimed actions. The training schedule allows all of the safety case scenarios to be covered over a three year period.

 

We observed that there appeared to be some inconsistencies in the selection of fleet training metrics, e.g. training of assistant emergency controller's were measured, even though this is not a baseline role, but incident response team training was not monitored. We also noted some errors in the way scoring was generated in the worksheet against the criteria in the definition document. We judged it proportionate to follow-up at a corporate level via routine engagement.

Based on the evidence sampled, we were satisfied that there are no significant shortfalls in the governance and oversight of the licensee’s emergency arrangements. We therefore rated the inspection ‘Green’ (no formal action) against licence condition 11 – emergency arrangements.