A court in the United Kingdom on Tuesday fined the government-owned entity that operates the Sellafield nuclear site £380,000 ($500,742) for a 2017 incident in which an employee was exposed to plutonium.
Sellafield Ltd., owned by the U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, pleaded guilty to violating the nation’s 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act. Along with the fine, the Carlisle Crown Court ordered the company to pay £96,753.22 ($127,475.91) in court costs, according to a press release from the government’s Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR).
The ONR filed the case relating to a Feb. 5, 2017, incident in which a Sellafield employee suffered a puncture wound on one hand while using a radioactive materials processing glove box. The worker took in roughly eight times as much plutonium as allowed in one year for nuclear personnel, the press release says.
The Office for Nuclear Regulation said its investigation of the incident determined that the employee had adhered to the company’s procedures as he cleaned a part of an alarm system. However, the corroded and sharpened probe punctured his skin through a protective glove.
“This was a case where Sellafield Limited failed to properly assess the risk to workers arising from sharp objects when working in a glovebox,” ONR Superintending Inspector Paul Smith said in the release. “The accident could have been avoided had the corroded probe been routinely replaced – a change that was put in place by the company immediately after the event.”
