Executive summary
Date(s) of inspection:
April 2025
Aim of inspection
To provide evidence to inform the ONR decision relating to the issue of a Licence Instrument for a Consent for return to service of Reactor 1 at Hartlepool on completion of the work undertaken during the outage. The inspection will examine the adequacy of conducting graphite inspections and the sentencing of collected graphite data
Subject(s) of inspection
- LC 28 - Examination, inspection, maintenance and testing - Rating: GREEN
Key findings, inspector's opinions and reasons for judgement made
As part of the statutory outage of Hartlepool Reactor 1, EDF Nuclear Generation (NGL) perform graphite core inspections. I conducted a licence condtion 28 examination, inspection, maintenance and testing compliance inspection.
This intervention is one of a number of LC28 compliance inspections performed by ONR during the periodic shutdown of Hartlepool Reactor 1. These inspections inform the ONR’s decision on whether to issue a licence instrument granting Consent for the return to service of HRA R1 following its 2025 periodic shutdown, as required by LC30.
This inspection specifically focused on the pre-outage activities for the calibration of the graphite core examination, inspection and trepanning equipment. I judged this intervention based on the intervention, the quality of the data I observed and the knowledge and experience of the licensee’s staff.
Conclusion
As a result of my intervention, I consider the licensee’s arrangements with regards to the calibration and testing of the NICIE and HTTU tools to be suitable and adequate.
In my opinion, the rigorous calibration/testing process for the inspection and trepanning equipment; coupled with the remedial action and learning from previous issues has provided confidence in the quality of data NGL gather to make appropriate on-pile decisions and enable sentencing of cracks and the safe removal of trepanned samples.
At the time of the intervention, there was no reason to believe that the safety case requirements would not be met. However, a subsequent assessment report will consider whether the results of the graphite core inspections are consistent with the graphite safety case, once the inspection schedule has been completed.
I have noted areas for improvement in NGL’s arrangements and compliance with said arrangements for the graphite related activities. Whilst shortfalls have been identified, I consider them minor and do not have a significant effect on nuclear safety. Hence I have allocated an ONR IIS rating ‘GREEN’- no formal action.