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Devonport Royal Dockyard - Inspection ID: 52957

Executive summary

Date(s) of inspection: October 2024

Aim of inspection

To judge the adequacy of DRDL’s ability to implement its arrangements made under Licence Condition (LC) 11 via an on-site Level 1 exercise demonstration of its emergency arrangements. 

Subject(s) of inspection

  • LC11 - Emergency arrangements - Rating: Green

Key findings, inspector's opinions and reasons for judgement made

The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) has undertaken an inspection to assess Devonport Royal Dockyard Ltd. (DRDL) implementation of its LC11 - emergency arrangements.  

The intervention was undertaken and rated against published guidance on ONR’s expectations, as described in the technical inspection guides (TIGs), which can be found at Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) Compliance inspection - Technical inspection guides. Specifically, this included NS-INSP-GD-011 and ONR-INSP-GD-064.
 
Based on the evidence sampled at the time of the intervention against DRDL’s LC 11 arrangements and ONR’s guidance, I consider that DRDL did adequately demonstrate its arrangements across the areas sampled. I was satisfied that the exercise scenario was realistic and sufficiently challenging.
 
It is my opinion that the Level 1 emergency exercise did provide adequate evidence of implementation of the established emergency arrangements on the Devonport site, in respect of LC 11.  A Green rating is therefore considered appropriate, in accordance with ONR Guide ONR-INSP-GD-064. 

Conclusion

ONR inspectors made observations at the Devonport Accident Control Centre (DACC), Emergency Monitoring Headquarters (EMHQ), Forward Command Post (FCP) and Intervention Areas (containment intervention, casualty recovery & EZRC) during the exercise. 
 
The observations from ONR were fed back to DRDL as part of the "hot wash-up" meeting along with the judgement. This judgement concluded that, based on the observations on the day, the demonstration did adequately demonstrate the sites emergency arrangements.