Two nuclear companies fined over safety errors

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has fined two of the UK’s nuclear companies over safety errors that lead to radioactive material leaks.
The British Nuclear Group (BNG) was fined £2m for an incident at the Thorp spent fuel reprocessing facility at Sellafield. Enough radioactive material to half fill an olympic-sized swimming pool leaked in May 2005. The BNG has also been prosecuted separately for the same incident by the Health & Safety Executive. The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) was also fined £2m for an accident in September 2005 at its Dounreay facility in Scotland. A total of 266 litres of nuclear waste was spilt on to a laboratory floor during a storage exercise. The penalties were disclosed in the NDA’s annual review for 2005-2006.
“We wanted to send out a strong signal that safety is our number one priority. We will not tolerate inadequate levels of performance such as this and we will not shrink from taking tough action. The NDA is not a pushover,” said a spokesman for the organisation.
The review also identified that Sellafield’s MOX fuel fabrication plant, which mixes uranium and plutonium from spent nuclear waste to make new reactor fuel, is not performing adequately. So far only 2.92 tonnes of material have been processed against a target of 5.08 tonnes.