Following concerns raised earlier this year about the direction currently being taken by the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), the announcement this week in the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s E-Bulletin of 27th August that the Office for Nuclear Regulation has joined the newly convened ‘N-Group’ ( http://www.nda.gov.uk/2014/08/nda-joins-other-industry-voices/) raises major doubts about the Regulator’s independence from the industry it is tasked with policing.
According to the E-Bulletin announcement, the N-Group sees the NDA joining together with other industry voices which include the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL), the Nuclear Industry Association (NIA), the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (NAMRC) and the Nuclear Institute (Ni) as well as ONR. The NDA describes the idea of the new Group as creating ‘a dialogue between the member organisations to identify shared priorities and areas where we can collaborate for mutual benefit and for the benefit of the industry (emphasis added) and the UK as a whole’.
CORE’s spokesman Martin Forwood commented today:
‘In terms of regulating the safety of nuclear facilities without fear or favour, it is beyond belief that ONR should think it suitable or sensible for a supposedly independent regulator to sit on this newly formed Group whose dialogue is for the benefit of the nuclear industry. If ONR is to retain any shred of public confidence in its ability to independently perform its vital safety and security role, it must abandon its membership of this overtly pro-nuclear N Group immediately’.
Shortly after gaining its independence (established under the 2013 Energy Act as a Public Corporation) on the 1st April this year, that independence was challenged by the Independent Newspaper (27/5/14) in an article that raised the clear conflicts of interest that resulted from ONR’s award of contracts for technical assistance to major UK contractors. These include Jacobs (part of the AWE weapons consortium) and Amec (Sellafield clean-up) – both of whom are supporting Horizon Nuclear Power’s plans for new-build at Wylfa on Anglesey and Oldbury in Gloucestershire. Other ONR contractors include Arup and Sir Robert McAlpine.
In June, further criticism was levelled at ONR for its role in extending the safety limits relating to the shrinkage of the graphite blocks within the reactors of UK’s ageing fleet of nuclear power stations. ONR’s approval for the margin of graphite shrinkage (from decades of radiation) to be relaxed from 6.2% to 8% was described by University of Greenwich Professor of Energy Steve Thomas as ‘not feeling good – when we come up against limits and the first thing they [the ONR] do is to move the goalposts’. (Guardian 4th June 2014). A spokesman for energy consultancy Inenco said the UK had little choice but to gamble with nuclear reactor safety limits if the country was avoid the looming 1970’s-style blackouts.
Additional unease about ONR’s competency surfaced in March this year over its role in the failure of the Ministry of Defence to publicise details of an accident at the Vulcan Naval Reactor Test Establishment accident in Scotland in 2012, when levels of radioactivity had been detected in reactor cooling water. A request at the time by the Ministry of Defence for regulators to withold details of the incident from the public domain led to subsequent charges by the Scottish Government and others of a cover-up.
Further questions about ONR’s commitment arose in June when the West Cumbria Sellafield Sites Stakeholder Group (WCSSG) committee was told that ONR would in future be attending only one of the two’ main group scrutiny meetings’ held each year by WCSSG. Subsequently made aware of the committee’s strong view that ONR must attended both scrutiny meetings so that it could be held to account for its vital regulation of Sellafield, ONR has now agreed to attend both meetings.
Martin Forwood added: ‘ONR has clearly lost its way recently and badly needs to get its act together if it is to fulfil its stated mission which its official website describes as providing efficient and effective regulation of the nuclear industry, holding it to account on behalf of the public ’.