Nuclear licensees are required to notify ONR of incidents occurring on their site which meet specific criteria (as specified in ONR Guidance – Notifying and Reporting Incidents and Events to ONR , will be of most interest). Information reported to ONR in the event of incidents meeting these criteria, does not necessarily contain information on whether the incident required the suspension or partial suspension of production.
ONR does however require that incidents are followed up by the dutyholder and corrective actions put in place. Both the initial response by the dutyholder to the incident and the corrective actions may lead to suspension of production whilst repairs/modifications are undertaken.
Although we cannot answer the FOI on the number of specific incidents which have resulted in “either the suspension of production, reduction of production or repair work to be carried out”, we can provide information on the total number of incidents reported by year, with an indication of their severity using the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) set out in the table below.
| Site | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 (as at 18/06/2019) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Springfields | ||||||
| INES 0 | 6 | 8 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 4 |
| INES 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Heysham 1 | ||||||
| INES 0 | 19 | 18 | 12 | 9 | 13 | 4 |
| INES 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| Heysham 2 | ||||||
| INES 0 | 12 | 7 | 8 | 7 | 14 | 3 |
| INES 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Key: INES 1 - anomaly, INES 0 - no safety significance
There were no incidents reported by the sites in question greater than INES 1.
Further information on events, including a description of INES, can be found on our website under the Events reported to nuclear safety regulator section .
These reports provide a list of events reported to ONR including health and safety but not including security events. The following documents will be of most interest:
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