BRITISH Nuclear Fuels was fined £20,000 in a Cumbria court yesterday for showing "total disregard" to warnings about poor maintenance of a bridge carrying nuclear waste which it discharges into the Irish Sea.
The fine came days before the closing date for submissions on the company's proposals to bring into operation a controversial new nuclear fuel plant at its Sellafield complex in Cumbria. This is opposed by the Irish Government, which yesterday outlined objections it has submitted to the British Environment Agency.
BNFL was fined the maximum permissible £20,000 after pleading guilty at Whitehaven Magistrates Court to breaching nuclear regulations. The court heard that the bridge was in danger of collapse, which could have led to a pipe fracture and a leak of radioactive material.
The company failed to act on a series of recommendations to carry out "urgent and immediate" repairs on the 100-metre bridge carrying the main low-level radio-active discharge from the plant - over a railway line to the Irish Sea.
Imposing the maximum fine allowable for a breach of the Radioactive Substances Act, the chairman of the magistrates, Mr Frank Hornsby, said that the public had a right to expect that BNFL carried out its responsibilities fully. "The total disregard of reports prepared between 1990 and 1995 recommending urgent remedial action is of grave concern", he said.
BNFL said that "at no time was there any discharge to the environment or any harm to any individual". The company took its safety and environmental responsibilities very seriously and had "taken on board the points learned from this case", it said in a statement.
The hearing coincided with Irish opposition to the new mixed oxide (MOX) plant. A public consultation process on the £300 million plant concludes on Monday.
The Minister of State for Transport, Energy and Communications, Mr Emmet Stagg, said that the plant would prolong and expand the nuclear reprocessing industry. He accused BNFL of failing to show that MOX's benefits outweighed its disadvantages.
If the plant is commissioned it will produce a mixture of plutonium and uranium fuel for use in some French, German and Japanese reactors.
The path BNFL was taking would lead to plutonium proliferation, Mr Stagg said. "Because the fast-breeder nuclear programme has been virtually abandoned, and anticipated worldwide demand for plutonium has not materialised, BNFL now realise they have produced a monster they cannot control."
In another submission, Ms Patricia McKenna, the Green Party MEP, said that the plant would add to the world's stockpile of plutonium without providing adequate safeguards.
BNFL says that plutonium from obsolete nuclear weapons from the US and Russia will be recycled into fuel for energy generation.
However, Ms McKenna disputed this. "Far from encouraging disarmament, this plant will generate more separated plutonium, the raw material for nuclear bombs. It would breach Britain's obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty", she added.
