Executive summary
Date(s) of inspection: April 2024
Aim of inspection
The purpose of this inspection was to determine the adequacy of the licensee's arrangements for dealing with any accident or emergency on the site by assessing the annual level 1 demonstration exercise.
Subject(s) of inspection
- LC11 - Emergency arrangements - Rating: Amber
Key findings, inspector's opinions and reasons for judgement made
ONR observed and assessed the level 1 emergency exercise ‘NIMROD’ at the EDF Energy Nuclear Generation Ltd. (NGL) Dungeness B power station.
The scenario simulated the licensee’s emergency response to a radiological contamination event. The licensee's response achieved the following key objectives:
- Establishment of three on-site command centres (Central Control Room (CCR), ECC and Access Control Point (ACP))
- Completion of a full site muster, accounting for all persons within an acceptable time-frame.
- Locate, assess, and recover the two casualties and hand them over to the ambulance service.
- Decontamination of personnel from the incident scene.
- The management of three persons who were contaminated whilst trying to provide assistance
- Damage assessment of the water fire suppression system adjacent to accident and termination of the leak.
Generally, the performance of the command centres were adequate, however we observed shortfalls associated with the:
- Consideration of appropriate Respiratory Protective Equipment (RPE) for intervention personnel;
- Consideration of the radiological risk and action to minimise risk of harm to personnel from contamination (internal and external) at the incident scene;
- Timely implementation of the licensee’s radiological contingency plan; and
- Decision making and incident scene management.
Conclusion
We were satisfied that the exercise scenario provided an appropriate level of challenge to demonstrate the implementation of the emergency arrangements at Dungeness B.
We judged that the licensee’s performance was not adequate and awarded an amber (seek improvement) inspection rating against licence condition 11 (emergency arrangements).