An investigation by the BBC’s Panorama news show uncovered what it called a catalog of safety failures at the United Kingdom’s Sellafield nuclear fuel reprocessing and decommissioning facility.
The findings, reported Monday and based on concerns raised by a whistleblower who had worked at the site in Cumbria, included insufficient personnel at times for required safety levels, emergency management concerns, and storage of uranium and plutonium samples in thousands of deteriorating plastic bottles, according to Panorama.
“If there is a fire there it could generate a plume of radiological waste that will go across Western Europe,” the former senior manager told the BBC.
While minimum personnel requirements differ among facilities at Sellafield, they might encompass just six employees in a processing plant that contains 10 times that many workers. In the year leading up to July 2013, 97 instances of insufficient personnel at Sellafield locations were recorded, according to Panorama.
Sellafield nuclear safety chief Rex Strong played down the danger posed by potentially low personnel levels: “You make alternative arrangements, so the things that have to be done get done. Facilities are shut down if we’re not able to operate them in the way that we want to.”
The BBC report said over 2,000 bottles are still used to hold plutonium and uranium samples on-site, long after their planned service lives. In a prepared statement, Sellafield said the samples are “kept securely,” adding that that “to imply that such material is inappropriately managed is simply not true.”
The Sellafield site is operated by Sellafield Ltd., which is now wholly owned by the U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
“Sellafield is safe, there is no question about that,” the two organizations said in a joint statement Sunday. “Maintaining safety is the priority at Sellafield. Employees work around the clock every day to ensure that the site is safe today, tomorrow and in the future.”
