On 29 November 2005 the UK Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (DTI) announced a review of energy policy. In January 2006 DTI asked the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to contribute an expert report on some specific health and safety risks arising from recent and potential energy developments and on the HSE’s approach to ensure that risks arising from these are sensibly managed by industry. This report will provide an assessment of the health and safety risks associated with a range of technologies to meet the UK’s energy needs, including a new generation of nuclear power stations. As well, it will provide a review of HSE’s approach to regulating new nuclear build, especially the potential role of pre-licensing assessments of candidate designs.
The IAEA review programme assists Member States to enhance the organisation and performance of their nuclear regulatory body. IRRS is a peer review service conducted by a team of international experts with direct experience in the areas of evaluation. Missions are made only at the request of a Member State and are based on voluntary co-operation. They focus on several topics to assess the regulatory body's effectiveness and are not an inspection to determine compliance with national legislation, rather an objective review of nuclear regulatory practices with respect to international guidelines.
In this context, an IAEA Integrated Regulatory Review Service team (IRRS) was invited to conduct a review between 26 March - 03 April 2006 to assess how HSE intends to go about the appraisal of reactor designs. The review focused on the following IRRS topics: Organisation; Authorisation; and Review and Assessment. Three further IRRS topics were reviewed to ensure that the team had an appreciation of the UK’s legal system and its approach to nuclear safety regulation. These topics were: Legislative and Governmental Responsibilities; Authority, Responsibilities and Functions of the Regulatory Body; and Regulations and Guides.
The final report of the IAEA mission [PDF 239kb] is based on the combined expertise of the team with reference to IAEA standards. Good practices are identified and recommendations and suggestions for improvements are made.
The review team identified 13 good practices, which will be promulgated world-wide by IAEA for the benefit of their Member States. The team also made 13 recommendations and 14 suggestions.
ND has categorised these findings into three groups:
The report of the mission also contains four proposals in which the team provides their expert opinion on how ND might adapt its approach to deal with new build activities. These will be considered by ND along with other inputs into Energy Review.
The table contains HSE/ND’s initial response to each of the mission findings have been collated into a table [PDF 151kb]
ND management welcomes the results of this independent review and the chance to interact with world experts as part of its strive for better regulation of the UK nuclear industry.
The IAEA report gives a balanced picture, noting the robustness of the UK's regulatory regime, and the expertise and experience of HSE's nuclear inspectors. The IAEA team's conclusions are positive. ND is an effective regulator which is applying international best practice and increasing its effectiveness and efficiency while meeting a number of new challenges.