The footprint of the nuclear licensed site at the Maynard Centre in Cardiff has been significantly reduced after the ONR granted GE Healthcare’s application to revoke its current licence and create a smaller licensed area within the site boundary.
The Chief Nuclear Inspector, Andy Hall, revoked the Centre’s previous licence and signed a replacement to create the smaller Cardiff Nuclear Licensed Site. A formal notice has also been issued which ends GE Healthcare’s nuclear licensee responsibility for the de-licensed area. This will allow plans to proceed for an area of the site to be developed into an innovation village, a national centre of excellence for hi-tech life science companies.
The Maynard Centre ceased manufacturing radio-chemicals for healthcare and life sciences research in April 2010 and, having completed a series of decommissioning activities, the only remaining nuclear-related activity at the site is now storage of waste from earlier manufacturing processes in preparation for its disposal.
The outcome represents the culmination of six years of work by the licensee in collaboration with ONR, the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales.
Simon Morgan, ONR Inspector for Nuclear Safety, said: “This relicensing exercise was unusual in that it involved the de-licensing of part of the site and re-licensing of the remainder to allow this change of activity on the site. Throughout the project both ONR and GEHC engaged productively to enable effective planning and execution of the decommissioning activities.”
In issuing this licence, ONR carried out comprehensive assessment and inspection work across five key areas, concluding that the criterion for de-licensing had been achieved in the buildings and areas to be de-licensed, and re-licensing for could proceed.