Nuclear disaster averted in the UK by dirty laundry, read about the incredibly irresponsilbe mess they must have had there!

Read and weep about the unbelievably messy alarm system they seem to have there:


A radioactive leak that could have caused Britain's worst nuclear disaster was only averted when a worker in an adjoining room spotted water as he sorted laundry, according to a newly-obtained official report.

By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent
Published: 7:00AM BST 11 Jun 2009

More than 40,000 gallons of radioactive water leaked into the open when a 15ft crack appeared in a pipe leading to a cooling pond in the Sizewell A reactor in January 2007.

If the worker had not spotted it, the pool, which contained 5,000 spent uranium fuel rods, could have run dry, causing the rods to ignite which would have sparked a supercharged radioactive fire, it was claimed.

Despite the potential severity of the incident, no one has been fined or prosecuted.

HM Nuclear Installation Inspectorate, which compiled the report into the leak and found "significant risk that members of the public could have been harmed", only issued a safety directive to Magnox South, the site's operator.

It recognises that a prosecution may have been thought appropriate but none was undertaken. A prosecution would have taken "considerable resources" at a time when the NII was financially "stretched", it added.

Sizewell A, which is on the Suffolk coast, stopped generating electricity in December 2006 and the decommissioning process began.

Part of that process is the cooling of spent fuel rods in water ponds and it takes years before they can be moved.

The complete details of this incident were only released after a Freedom of Information request.

The report reveals a series of worrying failings.

When the pipe cracked before 11.30am on the morning of Sunday 7 January 2007, some 40,000 gallons of radioactive water spilled from a 15ft long split.

The radioactive water washed into drains and some found its way into the North Sea.

Any such leak should trigger an alarm but the one in situ not was working.

Even if the alarm had been working, it is unlikely that anyone would have noticed it, as a different alarm had been going off for days without anyone turning it off.

The next routine inspection of the area where the leak took place was not due for more than 10 hours.

By that time the pond could have drained dry and started a fire that would have released a radioactive plume which could have killed hundreds of people and forced the evacuation of thousands of people for tens of miles in villages along the coast and inland.

However a workman in the laundry room nearby noticed water leaking in and alerted engineers.

The report stated: "The pond could have been drained (it takes about 10 hours) before the required plant tour by an operator had taken place. In this worst-case scenario, if the exposed irradiated fuel caught fire it would result in an airborne off-site release."

John Large, an independent nuclear consultant, obtained the report as part of a dossier he compiled for the local Shutdown Sizewell Campaign.

He said the leak could have caused the worst nuclear disaster in Britain.

"It would have been a very serious radioactive release running down the coast of Suffolk as far as the wind would take it."

Campaigners claim the incident has been downplayed because the inspectorate was reluctant to highlight a leak at a time when the Government was beginning to make public plans to build a new generation of nuclear plants.

The Government is currently planning to begin building a new generation of nuclear power plants from around 2013.

However, Mike Weightman, Chief Inspector of the NII said that the leak could not have caused a fire because the fuel rods were already partly decayed and two feet of water would have remained in the pond.

He also denied claims that the NII failed to prosecute because of a lack of funds.

"The operators secured improvements in safety and complied with the law very early on," he said. "If we had had to go to prosecution we would have."

The Environment Agency said the leak had caused no threat to the public but would look at using wider powers to inspect nuclear installations in future.

Magnox South said it took the incident extremely seriously and co-operated fully with both the NII and the EA.

[link to www.telegraph.co.uk]

Last Edited by FreeFlow on 06/13/2009 09:07 AM