A consignment of radioactive scrap metal heading from Sellafield to a scrap metal dealer in Barrow-in-Furness had to be recalled to the site when officials at Sellafield suspected that the material might have been contaminated. The Department of Transport, the Environment Agency and the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate have been informed and an investigation into the event, currently classified below the INES scale, is underway.
The scrap consisted of a metal framework that had been removed from a trailer that had been used to transport spent nuclear fuel flasks by road from the Chapelcross power station in Scotland to Sellafield for reprocessing in the B205 magnox reprocessing plant. Prior to leaving for Barrow on 24th November the scrap metal had not been checked by monitors.
Suspicions that the framework might be contaminated were aroused the same day when monitors at Sellafield discovered that the trailer from which the framework had been removed showed signs of contamination. The delivery of the skip containing the suspect metal was halted before it reached Barrow-in-Furness and returned to Sellafield where monitors found the framework to be contaminated “at very low levels” of beta and gamma radiation.
British Nuclear Group (BNG) who reported the event in the weekly Sellafield Newsletter has said that the transport of the contaminated scrap had not breached regulations and posed no risk to the public and would have posed no risk to the scrap metal dealer who has not been named.
The fate of the contaminated framework will hinge on the outcome of the investigation into the event, but it seems likely that the metal will be consigned to the licensed low level waste dump at Drigg.