Kenneth Fletcher
WC Monitor
1/24/2014

U.K. cleanup contractor Sellafield Limited last week lost an appeal to a £700,000 ($1.1 million) fine levied against the company for sending contaminated waste to a regular landfill. The company pleaded guilty in January to sending four bags of mixed waste from normal operations in controlled areas to a regular landfill instead of a low level waste facility. An error caused the bags to be marked general waste, but the waste was later retrieved and returned to Sellafield. While the URS-led company appealed the fine in the U.K. Court of Appeals, finding it “manifestly excessive,” the court denied the appeal late last week, according to the Press Association, the UK’s national news agency.

Lord Thomas, who heard the appeal, cited an emphasis on safety as  a reason  for  the  court’s decision. “It  must  be viewed against the requirement that those engaged either as directors or shareholders of companies engaged in the nuclear industry must give the highest priority to safety as Parliament has directed,” he said, according to reports.”A fine of the size imposed, even though only a little more than a week’s profit and about 2% of its weekly income, would, in our view, in the circumstances achieve the statutory purposes of sentencing by bringing home to the directors of Sellafield Ltd and its professional shareholders the seriousness of the offences committed and provide a real incentive to the directors and shareholders to remedy the failures which the judge found existed at the site at Sellafield.”