Auditing as a part of the work of nuclear safety regulation in the UK

Within the UK the regulatory body having responsibility for the licensing of nuclear installations is the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) is that part of the HSE which administers this function. In 1980 when the construction of the advanced gas cooled reactors at Heysham 2 and Torness was licensed, a condition was attached to the licences which required the licensees to submit to the NII their quality assurance arrangements for approval. To check for compliance with this condition the NII carried out audits on the licensees throughout the project. Following this beginning and the formal adoption of quality assurance principles by the licensees for their installations, a quality assurance condition was attached to the licence for each operating nuclear installation, and auditing by NII was extended to all installations. It is judged from experience since 1980 that direct audit by the regulator is an effective means of checking and ensuring compliance with this licence condition. The activity of NII auditing has interfaces with regulatory assessment of safety and the regulatory work of site inspection. Experience over the last ten years has shown that both the work of safety assessment and site inspection, benefit from the activity of audit. In addition, auditing provides a flexible means of focusing onto potential problem areas as well as enabling auditors to highlight problem areas of topics under review. Further benefits are derived from informing licensees well in advance of the programme of audit, and because the audit reports themselves provide a clear statement of the work of nuclear safety regulation and are a useful source of reference. (author)