shut sellafield

fined a cool half a million pounds for a major undetected spill of hundreds of litres of radioactive material in THORP, what happens next.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) announced today that it has granted consent for the re-start of the THORP facility at the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant.

HSE’s Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) is satisfied that the licensee, British Nuclear Group Sellafield Ltd (BNGSL), has done all the work necessary to ensure that THORP can be re-started and operated safely. [source: hse.gov.uk ]

HSE will publish a report on its investigation into the leak at THORP shortly.

think, think again, and again and again. Think about it!

The Minister for the Environment has said the Government is opposed to the construction of any new nuclear power facility at the controversial Sellafield site in Cumbria. Dick Roche was speaking in London after talks with Britain’s Trade Secretary, Alastair Darling, who is the minister with responsibility for Sellafield. Later this year the Blair administration is expected to approve the construction of a new generation of nuclear power stations along Britain’s west coast.

interesting results from google trends
ireland is twice the UK count with Norway third.
Try a wind versus nuclear energy search.

[BBC reports] Sunderland train station was evacuated after a train carrying two nuclear flasks to Sellafield broke down. Smoke was seen coming from the train after an axle overheated, according to British Transport Police (BTP). The station was closed on Wednesday afternoon but has now re-opened to passengers. Mainline and Metro services were hit but are now running again. BTP said the nuclear load did not pose a danger and the station was evacuated because of fumes from the axle. The train is operated by Direct Rail Services, a freight operating company created by British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL).

The operator of Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant has been fined £500,000 following a radioactive leak.

[guardian]

[guardian / PA] The firm that runs Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant will be fined in court on Monday after admitting safety breaches following a radioactive leak.

Around 83,000 litres of acid containing about 20 tonnes of uranium and 160kg of plutonium escaped from a ruptured pipe into a sealed concrete holding cell at the site in Cumbria.

The spillage of spent nuclear fuel was discovered in April 2005 – but may have gone unnoticed for eight months.

No one was injured and no radioactive material escaped into the atmosphere after the leak at the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (Thorp) part of the site.

But British Nuclear Group Sellafield Ltd, which runs the facility, later pleaded guilty to three counts of breaching conditions attached to the Sellafield site licence, granted under the Nuclear Installations Act 1965.

The Health and Safety Executive brought the prosecution, arguing the firm failed to ensure safety systems were in good working order and that radioactive material was effectively contained.

Representatives of the company will appear at Carlisle Crown Court on Monday.

They face unlimited fines under the powers of the court.

also [irish indo 16/10]

by Maria Daly athloneadvertiser.ie

People living in Athlone could face compulsary resettlement if a Chernobyl-like nuclear explosion was to happen in the Welsh nuclear power plant of Wylfa. The new fallout maps were created for a conference by the Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities Forum (NFLA). The conference will take place in the D Hotel, Drogheda, on Saturday September 30. The conference will be hosted by Cllr Michael O’Dowd and will cover such issues as the health consequences for Ireland of a major nuclear accident. Speakers on the day will include Pete Roche who is a nuclear policy consultant, Dylan Morgan of People Against Wylfa B, and Rite Holmes who is a member of the Hunterston Site Stakeholder Group. The British government are currently looking at the possiblility of building a nuclear power plant at either Wylfa in Wales, Hunterston in Scotland, or Sellafield in England. If there was a nuclear fallout in any of the proposed sites and south easterly winds were prevailing, Athlone and the Midlands would be under serious threat of contamination. The NFLA has released a map which shows the fallout area that would follow an accident at the nuclear reactor in Wylfa if easterly winds carried fallout across to Ireland. Large areas of central and southern Ireland would become so contaminated that there would be cause for evacuation. The NFLA has based its maps on the fallout from the Chernobyl reactor accident which happened some 20 years ago. more

OSLO, Norway (CNN/AP) — A nuclear leak forced the shutdown of a small Norwegian research reactor on Saturday, but the radiation was contained, officials said. more

[By Alan Irving from Whitehaven News 24/08] “IT is a recipe for disaster — it will put safety at risk on the site.” That was the angry reaction of Prospect, the major nuclear staff union, over British Nuclear Fuels plans to sell off only a small part off its operating arm, BNG, which has 8,500 on the Sellafield payroll. It has come has a shock about-turn to the nuclear workforce who were told BNG would be sold as one and they would all be transferred to one new employer under contract from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. Peter Clements, Prospect branch secretary, said yesterday: “Selling off Sellafield piecemeal is a recipe for disaster, we think it will compromise safety. It will be about cutting costs if you sell off different parts of the business to different companies. The danger here is that we’re going to have another Railtrack, with one lot doing one bit of maintenance and another doing something else – nobody will know who’s doing what. Safety and communications will suffer. “It is disgusting and deplorable that this has been done without any consultation with the unions. [full article]