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 Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) last April.
Briefly summarising the case as one ‘we do not take lightly’, HSE’s prosecutor pointed to the highly technical nature of the case. Requesting that the matter be dealt with at Crown Court level, HSE reminded the Magistrates that the penalties they could impose were limited to £5000 per charge. The Magistrates agreed to the request and an initial Crown Court (Carlisle) hearing was set for of 7th July. BNG’s defence said little in reply other than to stress to the Court that all the leaked radiactive material had been contained within THORP and that there had been no risk to the general public.
The Court heard that the charges related to breaches of conditions of Sellafield’s Site Licence which had occured between 28th August 2004 and 18th April 2005. In essence, the breaches related to failures by the Company i) to make and comply with written instructions, ii) to ensure that safety systems were in good working order and that radioactive materials were contained, and iii) that if leaks occured they were detected and reported.
CORE’s spokesperson Martin Forwood said after the hearing “BNG’s own investigation into the accident admitted significant levels of negligence and incompetence by THORP workers as significantly contributing to the accident. They had little option but to plead guilty and we trust that the Crown Court hands down the tough penalties that such a case deserves”.
THORP remains closed today 14 months after the accident. A repair option (to bypass the damaged area of the THORP cell) has been agreed between BNG and the plant’s owners The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) but is still being assessed by the HSE’s Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII). A re-start of reprocessing operations at THORP, initially flagged up as December 2005, is now put by NDA as ‘this summer’, though independent experts believe this is optimistic in the extreme. Meanwhile, with THORP out of operation, stocks of reactor fuel from British Energy’s power stations continue to fill Sellafield’s dwindling pond storage space. Concerns about fuel storage have already ben raised by the NDA and will be increasingly echoed by British Energy as a fuel ‘gridlock’ threatens power station operation.