NIS Update: November 2019

Contents of the latest NIS Update newsletter from Nuclear Information Service:

•     Astute: seventeen month delay may impede Dreadnought programme
•     Devonport fined £600,000 for crane near-miss
•     AWE will miss 2020 date to leave ‘special measures’
•     £81m dividends paid to AWE consortium
•     Devonport in ‘special measures’: no end date in sight
•     AWE’s ‘do minimum’ waste plan: more details emerge

Astute: seventeen month delay may impede Dreadnought programme

Production of the fourth Astute-class submarine is nearly 17 months behind schedule, a delay that is likely to impact on the timetable for building the Dreadnought-class submarines. HMS Audacious was due to be handed over to the Navy in August 2019, but due to a fault the handover is now expected to be January 2021. Read more.

Devonport fined £600,000 for crane near-miss

Devonport Royal Dockyard Ltd were fined £666,667 plus costs of £27,611 for breaches of crane regulations over an incident where a stack of crane weights narrowly missed a worker. During a hearing in July, DRDL pleaded guilty to the charge. Read more.

AWE will miss 2020 date to leave ‘special measures’

The Atomic Weapons Establishment sites at Aldermaston and Burghfield will both remain in enhanced regulatory attention until at least 2021, a year longer than previously expected. In 2018 ONR predicted that AWE would be able to leave enhanced attention in 2020, but insufficient progress has been made. Read more.

£81m dividends paid to AWE consortium

The consortium of companies who own AWE Management Limited received dividend payouts totalling £81.7m in 2018. Lockheed Martin, Jacobs Engineering and Serco own the company which runs AWE on behalf Ministry of Defence. Read more.

Devonport in ‘special measures’: no end date in sight

Devonport Royal Dockyard Limited now been in enhanced regulatory attention for five years, due to concerns about its safety performance. A review by the Office for Nuclear Regulation in August 2018 found that the programme which is intended to move the site to routine regulatory attention was under-resourced and ambiguously managed. Read more.

AWE’s ‘do minimum’ waste plan: more details emerge

AWE Management’s plan to send nuclear waste to Sellafield was developed as a ‘do minimum’ option to compare against other proposed courses of action. The majority of AWE’s waste holdings will remain on site and untreated until a second generation waste treatment facility at Sellafield is operational. Read more.

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