CEGB approach to formalized quality assurance for the Heysham Stage-2 project

The CEGB currently has 18 operating reactors and 8 reactors being commissioned or under construction. During this period formal requirements for attaining satisfactory levels of quality have not been in force, but over the past 25 years CEGB has employed comprehensive and fully documented arrangements to ensure the necessary quality levels of safety-related items at every stage. This practice has formed an effective framework of control and includes many of the elements and activities of a formal quality assurance programme. The latest station in the CEGB's AGR programme is Heysham Stage 2 for which construction formally commenced with the pouring of concrete for the reactor foundations in September 1980. The site licence in existence for the Stage-1 reactors was modified to take account of the second phase and included a condition requiring the CEGB to make arrangements for quality assurance of the safety-related aspects of the plant from design through to operation. This was the first time that a formal requirement for quality assurance had been placed on the CEGB. The paper outlines the way in which the CEGB proposes to comply with these requirements. It also describes some of the existing CEGB procedures for attaining quality, including the technical and administrative arrangements, and concludes that these can form the basis of a more formal quality assurance procedure for the Heysham Stage-2 project. (author)