The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) undertakes all regulatory interactions with the Sellafield site licensee (Sellafield Limited, (SL)) against a strategy defined by the ONR Sellafield Sub Division. This planned intervention was undertaken as part of the ONR 2019/20 Intervention Plan.
This planned core licence condition inspection was carried out to determine the adequacy of SL’s implementation of its corporate arrangements for compliance with licence condition (LC) 22 – Modification or experiment on existing plant, at the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) at Sellafield.
I carried out a one day licence condition compliance inspection against LC22, Modification or experiment on existing plant. This comprised reviewing a sample of LC22 related records/documentation and discussions with personnel responsible for implementing the LC22 corporate arrangements.
N/A as this was not a safety systems inspection.
I sampled two Plant Modification Proposals (PMPs), one Temporary Plant Intervention (TPI) and three Software Modification Records (SMRs). For the modifications sampled I found that THORP had used the corporate governance arrangements to categorise the modifications, followed the corporate governance due process and had adequate oversight in place to understand the status of modifications or experiments on the plant. I also found that THORP’s management was actively pursuing the completion of overdue PMPs. I did not find any significant shortfalls, and I consider THORP to be in compliance with its legal duties under LC22.
On the basis of the evidence gathered during the inspection, I judge that an inspection rating of GREEN is warranted for LC22.