At Carlisle Crown Court today, British Nuclear Group (BNG) was fined £500,000 for an accident in April last year at Sellafield’s Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP). The accident was classified at Level 3 on the International Nuclear Event Scale. BNG, who operate THORP under contract to site owners the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), had pleaded … [Continue Reading]
British Nuclear Group (BNG) ‘fined’ £2M for THORP leak accident
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has today published its Operational Review 2005/06 with financial highlights of its accounts which show that a ‘fee reduction’ of £2M has been levied against its Sellafield BNG contractor for the THORP accident of last year. Today’s announcement revealing the fine is a major U-turn by the NDA who, as … [Continue Reading]
Trouble all round
The Health & Safety Executive’s (HSE) Carlisle Crown Court prosecution against British Nuclear Group (BNG) for the THORP leakage accident in April last year, due for hearing on 7th July, has been put back to the end of August at the earliest. Last month, at Whitehaven Magistrates court, BNG had pleaded guilty to 3 offences … [Continue Reading]
Sellafield in Court
British Nuclear Group today pleaded guilty at Whitehaven Magistrates Court, West Cumbria, to three charges brought by the Health & Safety Executive (HSE). The charges relate to the failures by the Company which led to the leakage of 83,000 litres of highly radioactive liquor from a fractured pipe within the Feed Clarification Cell of the … [Continue Reading]
British Nuclear Group to be prosecuted over THORP accident
The Heath & Safety Executive (HSE) North West has announced today that it will be bringing three criminal charges against British Nuclear Group (BNG). The charges relate to the accident last year at Sellafield’s Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) where 83,000 litres of highly radioactive liquor leaked from a fractured pipe. The decision to prosecute … [Continue Reading]
THORP Accident Anniversary – Problems, Power Stations and Prosecutions
One year after it was forced to shut down following a major accident (20th April 2005), Sellafield’s Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) remains idle and facing a series of major hurdles before any restart is possible. An original restart date of December 2005 has been retarded a number of times and now stands at ‘Summer … [Continue Reading]
Sellafield Transport Comes Off the Rails at Barrow Docks
In the same week that Greenpeace published a report warning of the dangers of transporting nuclear materials by rail in the UK, a railway wagon carrying an empty nuclear flask, designed to transport vitrified High Level Waste (HLW) from Sellafield, de-railed in the Barrow Docks railway system on Friday morning 31st March. In what a … [Continue Reading]
THORP facing further delay to re-start
Sellafield’s THORP reprocessing plant, closed in April last year following a major accident involving the spillage of 18,000 litres of highly radioactive nitric acid, is unlikely to be in a position to re-start until the back end of this year at the earliest. Despite the ongoing assessment since last May of a number of repair … [Continue Reading]
THORP – Extended Shut-Down
British Nuclear Group’s (BNG) lame-duck reprocessing plant THORP is likely to remain closed until March next year. The re-start date, contained in documents received by CORE from BNG under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FoIA) is several months later than that suggested by the site’s Managing Director Barry Snelson in June this year when … [Continue Reading]
Swedish plans to offload waste fuel on Sellafield for reprocssing
In a recent announcement which took other Nordic countries by surprise, Swedish company Studsvik-SVAFO has revealed plans to send a small consignment of research reactor fuel to Sellafield for reprocessing in the ageing B205 Magnox reprocessing plant. Amounting to no more than 5 tonnes, the spent fuel originated in the Studvik research reactor R-1, closed … [Continue Reading]