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Sizewell a – cooling pond recirculation pipe failure incident of 7 January 2007

Date released
28 April 2022
Request number

202203062

Release of information under
Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA)

Information requested

I would like to request information regarding the following incident, undertaken under the NII, please: SIZEWELL A – COOLING POND RECIRCULATION PIPE FAILURE INCIDENT OF 7 JANUARY 2007

The citation I have for the preliminary report on the incident is as follows: HSE, NII, Division 1 Project Assessment Report No: 2007/0011, Preliminary Investigation Report, Sizewell A, Uncontrolled Partial Emptying of the Sizewell A Irradiated Fuel Cooling Pond on 7th January 2007

I would also be interested in any further reports and correspondence held on file.

Information released

Part 1 of your request

With regards to the first part of your request for the preliminary report for the incident at Sizewell A dated 7 January 2007, I confirm that under Section 1 of the FOIA, we hold the report identified in the citation you provided.

Section 40 FOIA – Personal information

We have also removed some information from the attached report as it is personal data. This consists of names and job titles. Release of each of this type of information could identify the individual either directly or indirectly. The personal data has been withheld using the exemption Section 40(2) of the FOIA.

Release of the information would breach principle (a) of GDPR (lawfulness, fairness and transparency) on the grounds that there is no lawful basis to process this data. In addition, releasing this personal data would also breach principle (b) of GDPR (purpose limitation) as the data was provided for the purposes of report ownership or document control.

Part 2 of your request

We try to be as open as possible when answering requests for information. However, the second part of your request for “any further reports and correspondence held on file” is too broad.

As you are aware, investigations and other regulatory activities relating to licensed nuclear sites prior to 2014 were processed by ONR’s predecessor, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) which was part of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). We have identified over 80 documents that are potentially in scope of your request. However, due to how NII information held by ONR is stored on an external site, it would take us beyond the time of compliance to locate, retrieve and extract all the relevant additional reports and correspondence we hold that are potentially associated with the incident described in your request.

You may therefore wish to review your request for further information once you have read the enclosed report. If you can provide more specific details about the type of information or documents you are seeking, this would be helpful for us to retrieve and extract further.

Further Information

Should you wish to refine the second part of your request, please contact us via the email address contact@onr.gov.uk, quoting reference: FOI202203062. Any reformulated request will be then confirmed in writing and treated as a new FOI request.

For more information on the cost of compliance, please see the following link:

Please note that in accordance with Section 1(3) of the FOIA we are not under any further obligation to respond to the second part of your request until we have received the appropriate refinement.

Exemptions applied

12, 40

PIT (Public Interest Test) if applicable

N/A