Hello everyone

Welcome to the latest edition of ONR News, keeping you updated about our work as the UK’s independent nuclear regulator for safety, security and safeguards.

Our newsletter reaches you on the same day that we publish our Corporate Plan 2022-23, setting out our key ambitions until March 2023.

It demonstrates how we are striving to implement efficient and innovative ways to influence proportionate improvements in the nuclear industry to protect worker and public safety.

The Corporate Plan outlines our commitment to delivering robust regulation, with a particular focus on the management of ageing nuclear facilities, conventional health and safety performance, and effective leadership for safety and security, and being ready to respond to the government’s recently announced ambitions for new nuclear as part of its Energy Security Strategy. 

Elsewhere in this newsletter, you will read how we have achieved an important milestone within our Well-Informed Regulatory Decisions (WIReD) project, designed to digitise our regulatory processes and utilise modern IT practices to replace out-dated manual systems.

The Corporate Plan is also tangible proof of how we are dedicated to simplification across the organisation, with a more focused document this time. During the next year, we will continue to evolve and refine our publications, and begin developing a new website, as we work to make our information more accessible to our stakeholders and the public.

As always, we welcome your feedback and if you have any comments about ONR, our Corporate Plan, or our work in general, please get in touch.

Katie Day
Policy and Communications Director

We have today published our Corporate Plan 2022-23 which was laid in Parliament by our government sponsorship body, the Department for Work and Pensions.

It demonstrates how we remain firmly focused on delivering our mission to protect society by securing safe nuclear operations.

Find out more about what's within this year's Corporate Plan 2022-23

A major milestone of our ongoing IT modernisation programme is about to be reached which will enhance transparency and simplification between the regulator and dutyholders.

The WIReD project (Well-Informed Regulatory Decisions) has brought about the digitising and automating of manually intensive activities with a new dutyholder portal allowing licensees to monitor the progress of permissioning decisions and requests more easily.

Find out more about this summer’s launch of the WIReD dutyholder portal

Welcome to our regular Our People feature, focusing on our staff and the work we do every day to help keep the nuclear industry safe and secure.

'Our People' aims to bring our jobs to life while increasing understanding of our role among our stakeholders.

Find out more about Paul Garesse, Regulatory Technical Advisor

We recently hosted a symposium to advance understanding of the design safety and the safety assessment of nuclear installations in member countries of the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA).

Organised by the NEA and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), this month’s gathering in Merseyside provided a platform for sharing knowledge on Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) for nuclear reactors from technical experts around the world as ONR continues to promote its global professional development.

Find out more about the symposium event

Compliance with Improvement Notices at Hinkley Point C

BYLOR JV has complied with Improvement Notices served in May 2022 after a worker fell from height at Hinkley Point C.

The incident on 4 March 2022 involved a scaffold worker falling approximately five metres, who avoided serious injury.

We issued the Improvement Notice in May to contractors Bouygues Travaux Publics SAS and Laing O’Rourke Construction Limited, the joint venture partners in BYLOR JV, which is working on the Somerset construction site.

The contractors have now complied with the Improvement Notices by the deadline set by ONR, developing and implementing a safe system of work to ensure that all work at height associated with the striking of the Turbine Generator Table falsework is properly planned, appropriately supervised, and carried out in a manner which is safe, as far as reasonably practicable.

ONR Inspector John McKenniff said: “My team and I will continue to track the progress of the wider implementation of learning following this incident. ONR will maintain regulatory attention regarding work at height on the HPC site.”

New Nuclear Chairs Group holds inaugural meeting

A newly established Nuclear Chairs Group held its inaugural meeting last month.

It was organised by Mark McAllister, our chair, supporting our commitment to enhancing all our stakeholder engagement.

The new gathering of chairpersons from key groups within the nuclear industry, which will come together twice a year, spoke about their mutual challenges across the sector and touched on topics including cyber security, the skills agenda and the relationship between the civil and defence sides of the business.

Mark said: "There was unanimous agreement within the group that it was a valuable session, and there was great enthusiasm to carry on meeting in the future and to drive forward greater cooperation on issues of common interest."