Management of Nuclear safety

The request was partially successful.

Dear Ministry of Defence,

Management of Nuclear safety

Could you please provide me with information about how MOD responded to the findings in the HSE report “Safety audit of Dounreay1998 - Final report 2001”

http://www.hse.gov.uk/press/2002/e02009....

http://www.hse.gov.uk/nuclear/auditfin.pdf

In particular

"8 The audit found that UKAEA had undergone significant change in the eight to nine years since it had been licensed in 1990. A key finding of the audit was that the licensee, UKAEA, was not in day-to-day control of the site, processes and activities and its staff did not have full management of the operations of the plants. The closure of the Prototype Fast Reactor (PFR) in 1994, plus the transfer of employment of many UKAEA personnel to private companies, significantly reduced the level of resource and competence available to UKAEA. As a result of these changes, UKAEA placed increasing reliance on contractors to carry out many of the key safety functions previously performed by UKAEA staff. Although we do not object to the use of contractors as such, we found that in many cases contractorisation had extended too far. UKAEA could no longer demonstrate that it was in control of the contractors' activities or that it was able to understand the safety features of the plant and set, interpret and implement relevant standards. In other words, it could not show that it was able to discharge an ‘intelligent customer’ capability."

Yours faithfully,

Fred WP Dawson

DBR-SSDC-Safety Enquiries (MULTIUSER),

Dear Mr Dawson,

Your correspondence dated has been considered to be a request for
information in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 /
Environmental Information Regulations 2004. Following a review of
information to the HSE Safety Audit of Dounreay in 1998, we can find no
record of any direct MOD response. However, we do know that the HSE/NII
decided, partly as a result of that audit, to introduce Licence Condition
36 - Control of Organisational Change. As MOD had adopted the
Authorisation Conditions approach (the parallel to Licence Conditions) we
introduced Authorisation Condition 36.

If you are not satisfied with this response or you wish to complain about
any aspect of the handling of your request, then you should contact me in
the first instance. If informal resolution is not possible and you are
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that any request for an internal review must be made within 40 working
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If you remain dissatisfied following an internal review, you may take your
complaint to the Information Commissioner under the provisions of Section
50 of the Freedom of Information Act. Please note that the Information
Commissioner will not investigate your case until the MOD internal review
process has been completed. Further details of the role and powers of the
Information Commissioner can be found on the Commissioner's website,
[2]http://www.ico.gov.uk.

Andrew Lawson GradIOSH

DBR-SSDC-Safety3a

Main Building, Whitehall,

London SW1A 2HB

References

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