The safety of people and the environment is the cornerstone of all activities of Enresa.
Occupational Health and Safety
Occupational Risk Prevention
For Enresa, occupational risk prevention is a priority for ensuring the health and safety of workers, as well as for fostering the improvement of working conditions. For this purpose, it has its own Risk Prevention Service.
Enresa has implemented a Management System for Occupational Risk Prevention which enables it to rigorously enforce existing legislation and maintain an appropriate level of risk control.
In every workplace, project or activity, an Occupational Risk Prevention Plan is in place, which enables systematic action, following guidelines for reducing the likelihood of work-related accidents and illness in all areas of the company’s work.
The guiding principles of Enresa’s risk prevention policy are as follows:
- Integrating preventive actions into all organisational levels of the company;
- Guaranteeing all employees a working environment free from harassment of any kind;
- Committing to making use of all available instruments to ensure that employees are provided with a safe and healthy workplace, in which personal dignity is respected;
- Encouraging information-sharing and the consultation and participation of workers to enable effective decision-making, and ensuring that each worker receives sufficient and task-specific training (theoretical and practical), as a key preventive measure against occupational risks of all kinds;
- Committing to a modern and comprehensive occupational risk prevention policy, which fully takes into account psychosocial risks and implements the Community Strategy on Health and Safety at Work.
Basic Healthcare Unit
Enresa's Basic Healthcare Unit is integrated into the company’s Risk Prevention Service at national level. It includes Level I healthcare centres for managing cases of irradiation and/or contamination.
Purpose:
- The monitoring and management of medical examinations, alongside risk assessment analysis and risk prevention plans, constitutes the fundamental prevention mechanism for the protection of workers’ health.
- The Basic Healthcare Unit also carries out various preventive medicine actions for both individuals and groups as part of the Campaign for Healthy Companies, recognising health’s strategic value within the company.
Radiological Safety
Activities involving the handling of radioactive materials may cause the people involved to receive doses of radiation or to become contaminated by substances which emit radiation. These tasks are known as radiation-risk activities.
Radiation Safety is the discipline responsible for ensuring that radiation-risk activities are carried out safely in the interests of both people and the environment.
To this end, Enresa:
- Researches radiation safety and collaborates with its international counterparts;
- Equips its workplaces with the organisational means and capabilities (Radiological Protection Services or Technical Units) for the protection of all Enresa personnel and contracted workers who carry out radiation-risk activities;
- Promotes and implements informational actions and training for the development of a robust radiation safety culture amongst all staff involved in these activities;
- Subject to the direct supervision of the Nuclear Safety Council.
Enresa’s Radiological Protection Technical Unit
In addition to the Radiological Protection Services which Enresa organises in all its facilities (the El Cabril Disposal Facility, the Dismantling Project for the Jose Cabrera nuclear power plant and, Nuclear Installation Vandellos I, Decommissioning Project of the Santa María de Garoña NPP), there is a Radiological Protection Technical Unit (RPTU) at the company headquarter in Madrid. This unit was created in 1990.
Since its launch, the Technical Unit has inspected more than 10,000 radioactive sources.
This Technical Unit is authorised by the Nuclear Safety Council and its most important functions are as follows:
- Providing radiological protection to workers outside of Enresa facilities.
- Supervising, from a technical point of view, the removal and transportation of radioactive waste.
- Analysing and classifying radioactive sources and materials detected in metal industry facilities subject to the Radiological Monitoring Protocol.
- Analysing and classifying orphan sources recovered during the corresponding campaigns. Orphan sources are radioactive sources that are outside the usual controls imposed on radioactive substances until the time that they are detected and processed.
- Developing action protocols and procedures for radiological protection.
- Managing and monitoring Environmental Radiological Monitoring Plans and Environmental Monitoring Programmes for Enresa facilities.
- Providing guidance in the workplace on radiological protection.
- Providing training for risk prevention and action in the event of a radiological emergency.
- Providing support to the authorities and State security forces and bodies in response to radiological emergencies or incidents occurring in non-nuclear industries.