[ RadSafe ] Sellafield reprocessing plant 83, 000 liter plutonium leak undetected for 9 months

[James Salsman]

Two articles:

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=642358

Revealed: huge Sellafield leak went undetected for 9 months

Full scale disclosed of worst nuclear accident for decade. Catalogue of 
human error led to massive radioactive discharge. Accident may force 
ministers to shut troubled plant for good

By Francis Elliott, Deputy Political Editor
29 May 2005

Tens of thousands of litres of highly radioactive liquid leaked 
unnoticed for up to nine months from a ruptured pipe in the 
controversial Thorp reprocessing plant at Sellafield in what the IoS can 
reveal was Britain's worst nuclear accident for 13 years.

The leak, detected last month, was the result of a catalogue of human 
and engineering errors which resulted in a pool of nuclear liquor, half 
the volume of an Olympic swimming pool, being accidentally discharged. 
The magnitude of the incident throws the future of the troubled 
reprocessing plant into doubt this weekend as copies of an internal 
investigation circulate among senior ministers and officials.

British Nuclear Group, the company that runs the plant, last night 
admitted that workers failed to respond to "indicators" warning a badly 
designed pipe had sprung a leak as long ago as last August. The pool of 
nuclear liquor, 83,000 litres, was eventually discovered on 19 April. 
The company has ordered a review to check for other potential leaks 
caused by metal fatigue and an urgent drive against staff "complacency".

But ministers privately concede that Thorp, now owned by a quango, may 
never re-open as a result of the incident, classified as "serious" by 
the International Atomic Energy Authority. In a statement released 
yesterday the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency, the quango that inherited 
Thorp on 1 April, said it needed time to assess the report's findings 
before "discussing their implications" with the company and the 
Government, adding that "safety is the NDA's absolute priority".

The nuclear clean-up agency is thought to be fighting a battle with 
Downing Street to close the plant for good in a move that would cost 
taxpayers billions of pounds.

The leak comes just as ministers and nuclear firms are preparing to seek 
public support for a new generation of nuclear power stations to help 
meet climate change targets. It explains why Tony Blair and Alan 
Johnson, the new Secretary of State for Trade, have been so reluctant to 
start making the nuclear case.

The company has stressed the leak was contained and that the incident 
did not pose a threat to the public.

The company may yet face a criminal prosecution. A spokesman for the 
Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) said: "I can confirm we will be 
seeking to find out what monitors were in place, whether they were 
working and, if so, why they were not acted on."

Four inspectors have been on the Cumbrian site since the incident 
happened. In addition to human error, they are concentrating on why 
engineers failed to modify pipes leading to moveable tanks. Metal 
fatigue in the pipework was the principal cause of the leak.

It is thought that the investigation will continue for a number of weeks 
before a decision is made on further action against British Nuclear Group.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Trade and Industry said that Mr 
Johnson would wait until the completion of the NII probe before deciding 
on the plant's future.

"It is essential that BNG acts urgently to implement the recommendations 
to improve operating practice and retrieve the escaped liquid. We are 
going to wait for advice before taking a decision on the way forward."

---

http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=642357&host=3&dir=58

Plutonium was left lying in a puddle on the floor for nine months

'Complacency' led to the spillage of 83,000 litres of highly radioactive 
nuclear liquor at the Thorp reprocessing plant in Cumbria. Francis 
Elliott on a scandal that could destroy government plans for a second 
nuclear age

29 May 2005

On Friday 19 April, the nation's attention was fixed on the contents of 
Leo Blair's lunchbox. Journalists, desperate to enliven a dull election 
campaign, were debating the frequency with which the Prime Minister's 
son was served chips at his Westminster primary school.

Hundreds of miles away something was happening on the windswept Cumbrian 
coast that, had it been known at the time, would have blown the campaign 
wide open.

Managers at the troubled thermal oxide reprocessing plant - Thorp - in 
Sellafield became aware that they could not account for all the spent 
fuel, believed to have come from German nuclear power stations, it was 
supposed to be reprocessing.

Earlier that day they had decided to send a remote-controlled camera 
into the section of the plant, far too dangerous for human exposure, 
where the spent fuel is weighed in giant suspended tanks. The images it 
relayed horrified them. There on the stainless steel floor of the 
concrete cell housing the tanks lay a huge pool of highly radioactive 
nuclear liquor.

Altogether 83,000 litres of spent fuel dissolved in concentrated nitric 
acid shimmered beneath the camera lights. It contained enough plutonium 
to make 20 nuclear weapons.

The nuclear liquor had been leaking from a badly designed pipe since at 
least January and possibly from as long ago as last August. The plant is 
now closed.

How could such a major leak have occurred and why wasn't it detected for 
up to nine months? These are the subjects of an on-going official 
inspection that could yet lead to criminal prosecutions.

At the time Barry Sneldon, managing director of the British Nuclear 
Group, moved quickly to downplay the incident.

"Let me reassure people that the plant is in a safe and stable state," 
he said in a press release initially reported only in the regional press.

Although the nuclear reprocessing plant's closure was eventually 
reported in the national press more than two weeks later it failed to 
achieve widespread coverage as Tony Blair's re-election continued to 
dominate the news.

In Downing Street and the rest of Whitehall there was near panic, 
however, as the scale of the incident began to emerge.

An IoS investigation has found that the Nuclear Installations 
Inspectorate (NII) almost immediately informed Patricia Hewitt, the then 
Trade Secretary, and Margaret Beckett, the Environment Secretary, that 
they believed the leak was a significant malfunction.

The regulator also promptly informed the International Atomic Energy 
Authority which earlier this month classified it as Level 3 - a "serious 
incident" on the International Nuclear Event Scale. The scale ranges 
from 0 to 7, with 7 reserved for catastrophes on the scale of Chernobyl 
and Three Mile Island.

The last Level 3 incident in Britain (also at Sellafield) was in 
September 1992. There has only been one other incident as serious in the 
world in the past year. The most recent Level 4 incident led to the 
deaths from radiation sickness of three workers in a Japanese nuclear 
plant in 1999. They had been mixing nuclear fuel in a bucket.

Nerves were hardly calmed when the preliminary findings of a Board of 
Inquiry convened by the British Nuclear Group, formerly BNFL, which runs 
the plant, began to circulate among a small group of senior ministers 
and officials.

The company released a copy of that report late on Friday afternoon. It 
makes devastating reading.

The immediate cause of the leak is blamed on "metal fatigue" arising 
from a design fault in one of the pipes leading to a suspended tank, 
known as an accountancy tank. Engineers appear to have overlooked the 
fact that the tank would rise and fall placing "greater stresses to be 
exerted on associated pipework than had been anticipated".

Worrying though such a fault is, it is the report's next findings that 
are the most shocking. "There is some evidence that the pipe may have 
started to fail in August 2004," it admits, adding that by January of 
this year "significant amounts of liquor started to be released".

"In the period between January 2005 and 19 April 2005 opportunities... 
were missed which would have shown that material was escaping. Had these 
opportunities been taken the quantity of liquid released could have been 
significantly reduced."

The report stresses that the liquor pooled in a "secondary containment 
area", which prevented any release to the environment. No personnel were 
harmed.

In an accompanying statement the company blamed "complacency" for the 
fact that warning signs were missed.

"I shall be taking action to ensure that any complacency is addressed," 
said Barry Snelson, who has been at Sellafield since 1 August 2004. He 
added that the plant was "safe and stable".

Privately, the company knows that Thorp's days may be numbered. Since 1 
April, the plant has been owned by a new government quango, the Nuclear 
Decommissioning Agency (NDA).

The NDA has the unenviable and extremely expensive job of cleaning up 
after Britain's ageing nuclear installations. Income from Thorp - it was 
projected to earn around £560m over the next 12 months - is supposed to 
partially offset the cost, £2.2bn this year, of the clean-up.

Late on Friday night the NDA released a carefully worded statement on 
its website which gave rise to speculation that Thorp's future was in 
jeopardy.

The issue of whether to build a new generation of nuclear power stations 
is one of the most sensitive of Tony Blair's third term.

It had been expected that ministers would aggressively begin to make the 
case for the carbon-free energy source immediately following the 
election. That they knew the full scale of the Thorp leak explains why 
no such exercise was launched.

David Willetts, the shadow Trade Secretary, said he would be calling for 
ministers to answer an urgent question on the incident when the Commons 
meets next week.

"This seems like a basic failure of procedure worthy of Homer Simpson. 
We do need to rationally consider the nuclear case but every incident 
like this undermines public confidence."

Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat trade spokesman, said: "This is 
staggering, and a timely reminder of why we moved away from nuclear in 
the first place. The truth is that human error can never be eliminated 
from this industry."

Mr Lamb urged ministers to give serious consideration to shutting the 
plant for good.

A DTI spokeswoman said: "It is essential that BNG acts urgently to 
implement the recommendations of the investigation to improve operating 
practice and retrieve the escaped liquid.

"Most of Thorp remains closed and the NDA and the regulators are still 
looking at how best to proceed. We are going to wait for advice before 
taking a decision on the way forward."

Company sources say there would be huge financial implications in 
closing the plant. It has £5bn worth of outstanding contracts and hefty 
penalty payments for non-delivery would have to be met from the public 
purse. The Government would also have to foot the bill for returning 
unprocessed spent fuel to customers in countries like Germany, Canada 
and Japan.

Work began on Monday to pump the highly radioactive liquor back into the 
system. But the damage to the future of British nuclear energy will take 
far longer to repair.