British authorities have launched a criminal prosecution against the operators of Sellafield nuclear reprocessing facility over a major leak in a pipe in the Thorp plant last year.
The incident saw 83,000 litres of highly radioactive waste leaking from a pipe into a containment chamber, with staff at the plant failing to notice the leak for at least eight months.
The plant, which processes waste from nuclear power stations, has been closed since then.
Yesterday, the health and safety executive for England and Wales announced it was bringing a criminal prosecution against the British Nuclear Group (BNG), the subsidiary of the state-owned British Nuclear Fuels which is responsible for operations at Sellafield.
In a statement yesterday, the executive said it was bringing a criminal prosecution in relation to three alleged breaches of its site licence. The summonses allege that BNG failed to ensure that safety systems were in good working order.
Under the licence the operators of Sellafield are legally required to ensure that radioactive material is contained properly and, if there is a leak, that it is identified promptly and reported to the relevant authorities.
News of the prosecution was welcomed by the Government. Minister for the Environment Dick Roche said the leak had "raised many concerns" in the Republic last year. "The bringing of this criminal prosecution against the operator of the Thorp plant correctly seeks to hold accountable those responsible for what occurred," he said.
The leak was first reported to the British authorities in April last year, days after it was formally identified. However, a subsequent investigation identified that there were indications of the leak as early as August 2004 but that these were not picked up by staff, and that evidence of the leak was dismissed in March 2005 as a calculation error, because the volumes involved were so large.
It also found there was an "operational complacency" among staff who believed that major leaks at the plant were impossible because of its design, despite previous evidence to the contrary. The report by a board of inquiry found that checks continuously failed to identify the leak in the plant in Cumbria on the northwest coast of England.
It led to 83,000 litres of radioactive material, containing 20 tonnes of uranium and plutonium, spilling from a pipe into a concrete containment cell. However, it did not lead to the emission of radioactive material into the environment or the Irish sea.
The report also said the company failed to carry out a detailed inspection of the pipework and containment tanks for a month after staff had evidence there was a major leak.