This was a supporting detail page of the main policy document.
It is crucial that safety at the UK’s nuclear facilities is properly regulated and supported by effective legislation. The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change is accountable to Parliament for nuclear safety at nuclear power stations and other licensed civil nuclear sites in the UK. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has statutory responsibility for making sure there is adequate health and safety regulation across most industry sectors, including the UK nuclear industry. HSE’s Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) is responsible for regulating safety at nuclear sites in the UK. The ONR’s licence conditions cover all arrangements for managing safety, including emergency planning arrangements and responding to accidents, leaks and spillages of radioactive materials at individual civil nuclear sites. The UK environment agencies regulate the disposal of radioactive waste from nuclear sites under the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2010 (EPR ). For more information visit our policy pages on Managing the use and disposal of radioactive and nuclear substances and waste. Legislation The nuclear industry is subject to the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 (and secondary legislation, including the Nuclear Installations Act 1965). These place general duties on employers and others in charge of premises to ensure, as far as is reasonably practicable:
the health, safety and welfare of their employees
that their activities do not expose other people to health and safety risks
The Ionising Radiations Regulations 1999, which apply to licensed and other sites using ionising radiation, require employers to keep worker and public exposure to radiation as low as reasonably practicable. They also require employers to comply with maximum exposure limits. The statutory maximum level for a worker is now 20 millisieverts (mSv) per annum. For all others, including members of the public, it is 1mSv per annum. However, the doses most workers and the public actually receive are much lower than the statutory maximum. Nuclear accidents and incidents There are well-developed and tested arrangements in place for responding to any nuclear emergency at a UK civil nuclear site. These are part of the licensing requirements that the ONR imposes on operators. In the event of a nuclear accident in the UK, the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) is responsible for notifying other countries that might be affected. Nuclear operators also voluntarily report on incidents at civil nuclear installations in England, Scotland and Wales that have possible implications for the safety of the site but do not require emergency plans to be invoked. Information on these incidents is published on the ONR website. Find out more about emergency planning and response at nuclear civil sites. Access DECC’s Radioactive Incident Monitoring Statistics. International nuclear safety The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change is responsible for any UK involvement:
with international governmental bodies operating in the nuclear area
in international initiatives to help Eastern European and former Soviet Union countries improve their nuclear safety (ONR supports and manages many of these initiatives)
UK progress report on the implementation of the IAEA Action Plan on Nuclear Safety In June 2011 a Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety was convened to direct, under the auspices of the IAEA, the process of learning and acting upon lessons learned following the accident at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in March 2011. Following the Conference the IAEA produced an Action Plan for enhancing the framework that was adopted by IAEA member states. The purpose of the Action Plan is to define a programme of work to strengthen the global nuclear safety framework and it included measures to enhance the nuclear safety, emergency preparedness and radiation protection arrangements. The Plan contains 12 key areas each of which have a range of specific action points for delivery by the IAEA or member states or Operators (and in some instances there are joint actions). While not obliged to do so the UK have produced and submitted to the IAEA a progress report on the delivery of our contribution to the IAEA Action Plan. Many of the actions proposed by the IAEA Action Plan are either current UK practice or we already had programmes in place to enhance our approach. This is largely due to the findings of the UK’s Chief Inspector of Nuclear Installation’s report on the impact of Fukushima on the UK nuclear sector. This report by the UK therefore focusses on the actions being taken that add to our already well-established and robust nuclear safety regime. UK progress report on the implementation of the IAEA Action Plan on Nuclear Safety Convention on Nuclear Safety The Convention on Nuclear Safety (CNS) came into force in 1996 to raise standards of civil nuclear safety internationally. Every 3 years each of the convention’s contracting parties (53 countries and the European Commission) must submit a compliance report explaining how they’re fulfilling the articles of the convention. The report is then peer reviewed. The ONR oversees the UK’s involvement in the convention and produces the compliance report. DECC is then responsible for submitting the report to the convention. The most recent report was submitted in January 2014. Japanese earthquake and tsunami: implications for the UK nuclear industry Following the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change asked UK Chief Nuclear Inspector Dr Mike Weightman to produce a report on the implications of the events in Japan and the lessons to be learned for the UK nuclear industry. Read more about Fukushima and the UK nuclear industry, including Dr Weightman’s report Japanese earthquake and tsunami: Implications for the UK nuclear industry, on the ONR website.