DEVONPORT Dockyard is to change the way it describes nuclear accident procedures to bring them into line with civilian practice.

The latest meeting of the Devonport Local Liaison Committee heard that the old military system of talking about 'category one, two and three' incidents will be replaced by more "logical" terms used at civilian nuclear facilities.

Mark Rouse, director of nuclear safety and quality at Devonport Dockyard, said the old definitions were confusing, as category one was in fact the least serious scenario.

The categories will now be referred to as 'site standby', 'on-site incident' and 'off-site nuclear emergency'.

Mr Rouse said: "We've had a demonstration exercise and that proved the new terms worked a lot better."

He said the exercise had pretended a submarine was in trouble, and independent regulators had agreed it went well.

The new practice will be in place for the next major emergency exercise, Short Sermon, which is due to take place in October.

Exercise Short Sermon (SS10) will involve 28 agencies, including Plymouth City Council, Babcock, NHS Plymouth and Derriford Hospital, the Ministry of Defence, South Western Ambulance Service, Devon and Cornwall Police, Devon & Somerset Fire and Rescue Service, and the Environment Agency.

The one-day exercise, on Wednesday October 13, is designed to test the procedures in place for dealing with a nuclear accident in the naval base.

The Local Liaison Committee meeting, at the Welcome Hall in Devonport, heard that the dockyard's regulators had not taken any enforcement action against the operators in the last six months, and there had been no significant investigations by the Health and Safety Executive.

Paul Naylor, representing the Environment Agency, said that there had been one incident during work on HMS Vigilant where work had been carried out without realising there was potential contamination from low levels of radioactivity.

As a result, some material was sent to landfill without being logged accordingly, but the dockyard is allowed to send low level material to landfill and it had not surpassed agreed limits. Mr Naylor said that the recent fire at Lean Quarry landfill site had not involved material from Devonport, but even if it had, there would have been no risk to the public as radiation would have been "negligible" compared to background levels.

Comment — Page 10