The highly secretive nuclear industry is being forced to release the catalogue of accidents, many of them serious, which reveal just how unsafe are their nuclear plants. The contents of this damning document would not have been known but for the Freedom of Information Act. Written by Mike Weightman, the Government’s chief nuclear inspector, it discloses that between 2001-8 there were 1,767 safety incidents – 2 every 3 days on average – where about half were judged serious enough “to have had the potential to challenge a nuclear system”. They spanned “all areas of existing nuclear plant”, including Sellafield, Aldermarston, and Burghfield in Berkshire. The significance of this revelation isn’t just that it shows that nuclear plants are a great deal more risky than we thought, but that we should also question far more rigorously than we have so far done whether in future a new nuclear build renaissance should be allowed to proceed as a major source of Britain’s energy supply. The evidence now revealed indicates that it should not.

Even in the last 2 years alone, several serious accidents have been uncovered (and one wonders how many still remain undetected):
1 Five workers were contaminated at a plutonium fuel plant in January 2007,
2 In the same month cooling water leaked from a pond containing highly radioactive spend fuel at Sizewell A,
3 In May 2007 a manhole at Dounreay in the north of Scotland was discovered with plutonium contamination,
4 At Sellafield several other accidents occurred, including in September 2008 a fault with a trap-door intended to give protection from highly radioactive waste,
5 Again at Sellafield liquid has been seeping from a crack in one of 4 waste tanks which processed effluent before it was discharged into the Irish Sea. It is believed locally that this may have started 50 years previously.
Apart from this catalogue of accidents on a scale far bigger than has ever been admitted, there 3 aspects to this which are deeply worrying. First, even when these leaks, breakdowns and other serious faults are discovered, no action is often taken against the operator. In the second case above, for example, the Nuclear Investigations Inspectorate (NII) found there was no prosecution for breaking safety rules partly because NII resources were “stretched”. Second, the cover-up of failure in the nuclear industry is endemic, when in the public interest for the safety of the nation there should be full openness and transparency.
Third, the shortage of experienced staff in the NII is acute. Weightman admits it is 26 inspectors short of the 192 needed (a 13.5% shortfall) to regulate existing facilities. It is shocking that the ratio of inspectors to nuclear plant is just a third of the international average and far below that of Spain, South Korea and Mexico. This is made all the worse by the Government’s new-build programme for nuclear and the consequential need to assess new reactor designs, for which Weightman says he needs a further 36 inspectors (a 16% shortfall). It is alarming what options Weightman feels forced to consider to deal with these substantial shortages – possibly collaborating with China in assessing new reactor designs, hiring French inspectors on secondment, and greater use of third-party (private sector) inspectors.
Most alarming of all is the HSE proposal to streamline the assessment of new reactor designs by waiving certain aspects, which could have safety implications, through a series of ‘exclusions’ and ‘conditions’ which could be revisited later. John Large, an independent nuclear engineer, as commented that “Some of these incidents were potentially serious. We already have evidence that their staffing crisis is compromising their regulation of nuclear safety. Without a strong and effective regulator, the risk of a large release of radioactivity increases”. Is it really wise to engage on a huge new nuclear build programme when the safety requirements are so significantly jeopardised?

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