Sat 22 Apr 2006
One year ago this week, 19/04/2005 it was reported that there was a level 3 accident at Thorpe nuclear reprocessing plant Sellafield. Thorpe is closed but the shipments still arrive.
the BBC reported after the event the following.
A leak at the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria was not spotted for three months, an investigation has revealed.
More than 20 tonnes of uranium and 160kg of plutonium spewed onto a floor when a pipe fractured at the Thorp reprocessing complex in January.
The British Nuclear Group, which carried out the inquiry, stressed that the material leaked into a sealed cell.
The discovery was made after a camera inspection of the cell in April.
It was classified as a level 3 accident by the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) because of the acid released in the incident.
INES measurements listed the 1986 Chernobyl disaster as a level 7 incident and Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979 as level 5.