Nuclear station in UK - the Sizewell Stakeholder Group -- set up to manage the flow of information about plant slows incident report time.

Magnox has informed UK regulators that water was found leaking from a cracked flow meter in the active effluent treatment plant at the Sizewell A nuclear power plant earlier this month, a document obtained by Platts shows. Magnox, which is owned by EnergySolutions, is the management and operations contractor responsible for 10 nuclear sites in the UK, including Sizewell A in Suffolk. Tim Watkins, site director of Sizewell A, last week wrote to members of the Sizewell Stakeholder Group -- set up to manage the flow of information about the nuclear site -- to inform them of the incident. Sizewell A stopped generating electricity in 2006 after 40 years of operations and is in the process of defuelling. Immediately to the north of Sizewell A is Britain's newest nuclear power station, Sizewell B, which is operated by British Energy. In his letter, Watkins said that, "While carrying out routine inspections in the early hours of Saturday, September 3, an operative noted unexpected plant indications and upon investigation, discovered water escaping from a cracked flow meter in the site's active effluent treatment plant (AETP)."

"The meter forms part of a section of the system which returns treated water to the used fuel storage pond and as such the activity in the liquid was very low. The plant was shut down before the loss initiated our early warning alarms," he said. "Our physical safety defenses performed exactly as expected. All the treated water except a small amount which remained on the floor in the AETP was captured by the system and there was no impact on personnel or the environment," he said. A "far more significant event" in the AETP, in January 2007, led to a complete review and overhaul of the plant's design and safety systems, he said. "I want to reassure you that this event does not provide any indication that improvements we made then are ineffective now," he said. Among the enhancements was the installation of early warning alarm and plant protection systems, which were not required in this case because the fall in pond levels was not enough to trigger any of the alarms, he said. agnox's investigations show that the pond level reduced by 1.4 cm, in a total depth of 6.75 m, which equates to a loss of 7 cubic meters of treated water. In total, about 13.3 cu m of treated water was captured by the secondary containment, over a period of four and a half hours, he said.

Magnox is carrying out its own investigations to identify any lessons to be learned from this event, Watkins said, and will share them with the stakeholder group in due course. The Office for Nuclear Regulation and the Environment Agency has been informed, he said, and inspectors from both organizations have "declared their intention to carry out their own investigations and we will support them in doing so." James Tott, Magnox Sites spokesman, said by telephone Monday that the company has no plans at the moment to issue a public statement about the incident.

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