JUST too trusting. That is the verdict of Britain鈥檚 safety watchdog on its
own relationship with the UK Atomic Energy Authority. Last week, the Health and
Safety Executive admitted to 快猫短视频that it had misjudged
problems at the authority鈥檚 nuclear plants.
The HSE, through its Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, is responsible for
ensuring the safety of workers at Britain鈥檚 nuclear facilities. It has been
sending inspectors to UKAEA sites since 1975, although it was not until 1990
that they gained legal power to control the sites鈥� activities under the Nuclear
Installations Act. The five UKAEA sites now licensed under the act are Dounreay
in Caithness, Harwell and Culham in Oxfordshire, Winfrith in Dorset and
Windscale, part of the Sellafield site in Cumbria.
According to Laurence Williams, the HSE鈥檚 chief inspector of nuclear
installations, these sites were not a high priority for the HSE before 1995. But
he now recognises that this was a mistake. 鈥淲e underestimated these sites,鈥� he
told 快猫短视频. 鈥淲ith hindsight, we were too trusting.鈥� Chastened
by what he discovered at Dounreay since he became chief inspector in March this
year, Williams is now setting up a new unit of inspectors.
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Last week鈥檚 report, the result of a comprehensive safety audit of Dounreay by
15 inspectors from the HSE and one from the Scottish Environment Protection
Agency, was triggered by an accident in May when part of the site鈥檚 power supply
was disrupted by a digger damaging an underground cable. The report concludes
that the UKAEA has been running plants 鈥渨ithout clear knowledge of some of the
risks鈥� and makes 143 recommendations for change.
The report alleges that some laboratories at Dounreay that are severely
contaminated with radioactive material have been abandoned for many years, with
no attempt to make them safe. Containment in laboratory 33, which contains
radioactive debris from fast reactor research in the 1980s, is broken and
ventilation ducts are 鈥渉anging loose鈥�, the report reveals. Partitions meant to
contain contamination at an old uranium processing plant are 鈥渉eld together with
adhesive tape鈥�.
About 1000 radioactive fuel elements and tonnes of contaminated sodium and
potassium alloy have been left in an experimental fast reactor since it closed
in 1977. The walls, ventilation system and other equipment in one old research
facility are 鈥渉eavily contaminated鈥� with plutonium. Cleaning up the facility
becomes more dangerous with time, the report points out, because the plutonium
decays into americium which emits gamma rays, the most damaging form of
radiation.
The UKAEA insists that its sites are safe and that it is cooperating fully
with the HSE鈥檚 inspectors. 鈥淥ur safety record is good but safety is a
continually evolving process and we work with our regulators to maintain and
improve our safety management and procedures across all our sites,鈥� says a
spokesman.