Incident at Devonport had "potentially nuclear implications"

An incident last year at Devonport dockyard in Plymouth had "potential nuclear implications", according to a Ministry of Defence (MoD) report released to the BBC.

The power-loss caused by a fault to the nuclear switchboard and which lasted for 90-minutes, could have been "catastrophic", a nuclear analyst told the BBC.

The incident, which was graded as "code-B" (the second most severe), was one of 50 potentially dangerous events recorded at the site in 2012.

An 'Improvement Notice' has been served by the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) on Devonport Royal Dockyard Limited (DRDL) after the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) agency was made aware of a number of incidents at the site in which operations were not carried out in accordance with DRDL’s own operating rules and instructions. The notice was served on 16 July.

Subsequent inspections by ONR found that DRDL had not fully complied with the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations and Nuclear Site Licence Condition 24, in that they had not made adequate management arrangements to ensure that their operating rules and instructions were implemented.

Although satisfied that that this issue did not have an immediate impact on safety and that DRDL had already taken action to remedy some of the problems, ONR’s opinion was that an Improvement Notice was necessary to ensure that DRDL make the appropriate improvements to their arrangements by 31 March 2014.

A project assessment report explaining the reasons behind the Improvement Notice in more detail will be published to the ONR website in due course.