Nuclear watchdog reveals harmful safety incidents
Britain has had seven safety breaches of "actual consequence" at its nuclear power stations in the last decade – one of which was classed as serious.
Operators of Britain's nuclear power stations reported 1,343 incidents to the Health and Safety Executive since 2001. The authority's inspectors classified 773 of them as posing no threat, while 563 were safety anomalies.
But seven incidents, five of which were related to power plants operated by British Energy, have been listed as harmful.
The most recent occurred last year at Dungeness B, after British Energy had been taken over by French nuclear giant EDF, when there was found to be "non-compliance or inadequacy" in its safety arrangements.
The most serious incident was a leak at Sellafield power station in 2005 which went undetected for months. No one was injured when around 80,000 tonnes of acid containing 20 tonnes of uranium and 160kg of plutonium leaked from a broken pipe into a sealed concrete holding.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which is responsible for the UK nuclear industry, fined Sellafield's operator, British Nuclear Group £2m. The company was also criticised for not realising there had been a safety breach any sooner.
Mike Weightman, the Health and Safety Executive's director of nuclear safety, said: "The UK's nuclear safety regulatory regime is acknowledged to be one of the most stringent in the world, and the nuclear industry has a strong safety record."
Of of the 10 nuclear power stations in the UK, seven will have come to the end of their working lives by 2018.
Britain wants to build 10 new stations, but the first is not likely to be ready before 2017.
The National Audit Office last week cast doubt on the Government's plans for new nuclear power stations without public subsidies.
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