Parts of the plant in Cumbria, the most hazardous in Britain, have too few staff to operate safely and radioactive plutonium and uranium has been stored in degrading plastic bottles for years that were only meant to be temporary, a BBC Panorama investigation claims.
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IRISH POLITICIANS HAVE called for Sellafield nuclear plant in England to be closed down after an investigation by BBC’s Panorama uncovered several safety concerns.
An investigation by “Panorama” was told by a whistle-blower that his “biggest fear” was a fire breaking out which could generate a “plume of radiological waste that will go across Western Europe”.
Regarding the allegation about the storage of waste, Sellafield said the waste was “stored safely in bottles, suitable for handling this type of material” in “purpose-made facilities within scientific laboratories”.
“These and the concerns raised in the BBC programme show that Sellafield presents a direct threat to the health and safety of staff and of communities, including the people of Louth”.
However, Sellafield had said improvements had been made at the main site and it was safe, and there were now fewer breaches of safe minimum manning levels. Staffing levels are one of the key performance indicators for Sellafield and any deviation from safe minimum staffing levels is not acceptable according to Sellafield documents.
The programme discovered that liquid containing plutonium and uranium has been kept in thousands of plastic bottles for years.
Meg Hillier MP, who chairs the Public Accounts Committee, was shocked by the figures: “It is incredible”.
Dr Rex Strong, head of nuclear safety at Sellafield, said: “The organisation is now focusing on putting right some underinvestments of the past in order to support the hazard and waste reduction mission that the site has”.
Despite the efforts of scientists at Sellafield to try to eradicate the problem, the probe found more than 2,000 bottles with the toxic materials still on site. He said: “You make alternative arrangements, so the things that have to be done, get done, and facilities are shut down if in fact we’re not able to operate them in the way that we want to – it’s not a level that’s unsafe”.
David Pethick, Director of Nuclear Management Partners – a company formerly contracted to own and operate the Sellafield facility, says that the infrastructure that was in place at Sellafield when they arrived to manage the facility was “very poor”. One report from 2013 says “years of neglect” had led to “intolerable conditions”.
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According to recent estimates, it will take over $216.4 billion Dollars and at least a 100 years to decontaminate and decommission the Sellafield complex.
