The final stage of the lifecycle of a Nuclear Licenced Site (NLS) is for its licence to be varied or revoked in all or part by ONR; this is referred to as delicensing. Currently for a site to be delicensed the licensee has to sufficiently demonstrate to ONR that the NLS (or part of) to be delicensed has met the criteria in the Nuclear Installations Act of ‘no danger’ from ionising radiations from anything on that part of the site. This webinar provided an overview of ONR’s interpretation of ‘no danger’ from ionising radiations from anything on that part of the site as well as what evidence a licensee must provide in order to demonstrate the criteria for delicensing has been met.

In addition, it provided an overview of draft regulatory guidance for a licensee to delicense via new, yet to be enacted by Parliament, Proportionate Regulatory Control, which potentially allows earlier delicensing when sites are in the final stages of decommissioning and the remaining radiological hazards and risks are such that a nuclear site licence is no longer required.

The video can be found at the bottom of this page.

Presenter - Paul Butler, ONR

Paul Butler has been in the nuclear industry for the past 12 years.  Prior to joining the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), Paul was on the nuclear graduate scheme where he undertook secondments at Nuclear Restoration Services, Sellafield and Nuvia.  From October 2014, Paul worked at the ONR as a Radiological Protection Specialist within the Radiological Protection and Criticality specialism.  Over these past ten years, Paul has worked on an array of different projects at ONR, including Generic Design Assessment for UK ABWR, UK HPR1000, undertaking IRR17 compliance inspections at licensed sites, periodic safety review of nuclear facilities, direct shine assessment as well as being involved with the assessment of delicensing of nuclear licensed sites.  For the past couple of years, Paul has been part of the ONR Transport Competent Authority as one of the Transport Compliance Inspectors as well as becoming the technical subject matter expert on delicensing of nuclear licensed sites.  Paul is also an active member of SRP; he's on several Committees as well as receiving Chartership (CRadP) status in February 2024.