THE operators of the Sellafield" nuclear plant were fined £25,000 yesterday after admitting to "serious and significant" failures in safety that left a worker contaminated with radioactivity.
State owned British Nuclear Fuels system of controlling the amount of contamination from plutonium to which a 53 year old contractor was exposed while working in its main fuel separation area had failed, Carlisle Crown Court heard.
BNFL was also ordered to pay £16,104 costs after pleading guilty to a breach of safety regulations.
Mr Henry Globe QC, prosecuting, said it was "fortuitous" that the plater, Mr James Martin, had only received a relatively low dose of radioactivity as he worked to replace bolts on a ventilation duct without proper protective clothing in June 1994. A work permit which was only partly legible had failed to state that Mr Martin should have been wearing gloves and a mask.
There was a series of other errors in the permit, made worse by an operation supervisor's failure to inspect the area before work started and a company health monitor who did not know she should have been there at all times.
A temporary drainage bottle with which Mr Martin came into contact had been rigged up on the duct to cope with a leak and had been left "incomplete, unmarked and insecure" for 18 months, Mr Globe said.
"Individually the failures were of differing importance. Collectively, though, they have produced a serious and significant failure to discharge the statutory duty owed by the defendants to Mr Martin," he said.
After it was discovered that Mr Martin had become contaminated, changing room staff wrongly allowed him to put back on his radioactive clothing before going to the surgery in the Cumbrian reprocessing plant, increasing the risk of contamination spreading.
Mr Martin panicked when a checking instrument had "gone off the scale" and suffered episodes of acute anxiety after the incident, Mr Globe said. In fact the radioactivity he received was only half the amount of BNFL's annual maximum target for workers and a seventh of the statutory.
But Mr Globe said the subsequent investigation "highlighted a failure by the defendants to take the necessary and important safety precautions demanded of them on a site where radioactive material is handled".
Mr Anthony Edwards Stuart, for the company, said BNFL regretted the incident and had introduced an extensive review of, training for contractors.
Judge Alastair Bell, the Recorder of Carlisle, said there seemed to have been a "decay of zeal" in carrying out safety procedures in the months before the incident.
BNFL said in a statement after the hearing it recognised compliance with safety procedures was not up to its "usually high standards".