As part of our commitment to ensuring regulation is targeted at the highest hazard risks, we have introduced a new approach to the regulation of the 12 former Magnox nuclear power stations licensed to Nuclear Restoration Services (NRS).
With each site at a different stage of decommissioning, it is industrial rather than nuclear hazards that now dominate. To ensure we continue to regulate effectively, our approach is evolving - placing greater focus on conventional health and safety risk rather than nuclear risk.
Rather than directing regulatory attention across all licence conditions attached to these sites, we will now focus on those most relevant to the lifecycle position of decommissioning sites. This includes licence conditions most closely related to:
- management systems
- radioactive waste management
- asset management
- people
Tanya MacLeod, ONR Corporate Inspector for NRS sites, who led the project, said:
"It's important that as the NRS sites change, our approach to regulating them evolves too.
"This is not about a lowering of standards or a reduced focus on nuclear safety. Our key safety expectations remain unchanged.
"Rather, we will now be directing our effort towards the highest hazards and where it will have the greatest impact on risk reduction and decommissioning progress.
"We will use our enabling regulatory approach to support proportionate and innovative solutions, provided they deliver demonstrable risk reduction and maintain robust safety outcomes."
Under the new approach, we will introduce themed inspections focused on people, processes and asset management, with greater emphasis placed on decommissioning progress. Drawing on learning from our approach at Sellafield, we will use key decommissioning milestones to hold NRS to account for making timely and sustained progress across their sites.
Hear more from Tanya MacLeod, our Corporate Inspector for NRS sites, about what this new approach means in practice:
A key forum supporting delivery of proportionate and innovative solutions is the NRS ‘D8’. This brings together regulators with NRS to collaborate, challenge, provide advice and support to maximise improvements in decommissioning, sustainability and public value outcomes across NRS sites. The forum provides the focus needed to fully embed Risk Informed Targeted Engagement.
You can find out more about decommissioning of nuclear sites in our Sellafield, Decommissioning, Fuel & Waste section.