Sellafield's nuclear reprocessing plant is to be prosecuted for allegedly failing to improve the safety of equipment which
Sellafield's nuclear reprocessing plant is to be prosecuted for allegedly failing to improve the safety of equipment which is used to gauge radioactivity. Sellafield's nuclear reprocessing plant is to be prosecuted for allegedly failing to improve the safety of equipment which is used to gauge radioactivity. The Health and Safety Executive has decided to take the troubled plant to court after warning British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) in March that it should improve safety measures. The watchdog alleges that some of the so-called sealed sources at Sellafield are missing and others are not properly registered.It will be the second time this year that the HSE has prosecuted the Cumbrian plant.The sealed source, a piece of equipment encased in metal or plastic, which holds a small quantity of radioactivity, is used to test other equipment for detecting or measuring radioactivity. There are about 3,500 sources in 180 sealed source stores on the Sellafield site.The Government's nuclear safety watchdog, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII), served a notice on BNFL in the spring saying it had to improve management of the equipment.
BNFL will appear before magistrates at Whitehaven, Cumbria, on 24 August, following NII allegations that it has not carried out the improvements.In June Whitehaven magistrates had fined BNFL £40,000 and ordered £35,000 costs after it breached safety rules.There has also been a high-level management shake-up in the company after a damning NII report raised serious concerns over a lack of a safety culture at the plant. False data on pellets of uranium and plutonium in mixed-oxide nuclear fuel were thought to originate with BNFL workers. Subsequently, Japan and Germany, two of the firm's biggest customers, suspended contracts.BNFL has always insisted the data was correct, but now the Government has agreed to take the fuel back from the purchasers, in the next two or three years. To do this, Britain will first have to get the go-ahead from every country the nuclear fuel could pass in transit.Earlier this year, the planned privatisation of BNFL was suspended. It will not proceed now until the latter half of 2002, well beyond the next general election.. Remember The final scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where Redford and Newman link hands and leap off a cliff towards a river below screaming, "Oh, shhhit!"? Steve Black knows the feeling He has been jumping off cliffs for years.
Diving off them, actually, and he has become well acquainted with that same sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. Remember The final scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where Redford and Newman link hands and leap off a cliff towards a river below screaming, "Oh, shhhit!"? Steve Black knows the feeling He has been jumping off cliffs for years. Diving off them, actually, and he has become well acquainted with that same sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. The world cliff-diving champion has perfected the art of making a splash - or rather, trying not to make too much of one - from a considerable height. He smiles as he does so, looking oh so relaxed and making it all seem easy. He's the ultimate showman, but confesses to severe stage-fright "Every time I dive, I'm afraid for my life It's scary But that's the buzz about it, how you get off on a high. If you don't get butterflies, get out of the business."The butterflies were flying all right last week, in our stomachs as well as the British-born Black's as we watched him and his fellow divers plunge from 28 metres off a clifftop in a mountain glade high above the Swiss village of Brontallo, close to Locarno.
