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Technical complements: Emergency response arrangements and exercisesAll PNTL vessels operate an Automatic Voyage Monitoring System which reports the vessel's latitude and longitude, speed and heading every two hours to the constantly manned Report Centre at Barrow. If a message is not received this would automatically activate the Emergency Response System. This system is supported by secondary systems such as telex over radio, radio telephone and company ship relay. The Emergency Control Centre at Barrow is fully equipped with charts for sea routes, ship and cask drawings and models, duplicated telex machines, several telephone lines (including a direct line to PNTL's Headquarters), a ship stability computer, audio and video recording and an emergency power supply. In the unlikely event of the loss of a PNTL vessel the emergency team is equipped with a sonar search system for locating the vessel. All the vessels are fitted with a sonar location and telemetry system which consists of four acoustic transponders wired to a number of onboard detectors. The sonar system is capable of operating in water depths in excess of 6,000 metres and has a range of up to 20 km. It can relay back to the surface:
The equipment is self-powered by high-grade lithium batteries with an expected life of over seven years. PNTL believes that regular exercises are an important part of emergency response planning. The annual exercise programme includes 2 United Kingdom based ship exercises (1 in port and 1 at sea), 2 Japan ship exercises, 4 fire exercises, and 1 desk top communications exercise (UK and Japan). All transport emergency exercises involve the call out of suitably trained and qualified personnel (health physics and engineering), their transport to the incident scene, and the necessary remedial actions to resolve a simulated radiological cask incident. |
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