UK’s Magnox Fined GBP 250,000 Over Bradwell Leaks

The sentence was passed today, 11 days after Magnox Electric Ltd (formerly Nuclear Electric Plc) was found guilty by a jury of three offences of failing to carry out any inspections of a holding tank from which liquid radioactive waste had been leaking since 1990.

The company was also sentenced today for two offences to which it had earlier pleaded guilty. The offences were failing to maintain a sump in the decontamination bay at the site for a period between 1 January 1993 to 18 December 2002 and from 18 December 2002 to 4 February 2004, when the leak was discovered.

The sump’s function was to collect waste water and other aqueous waste which arose from decontamination work undertaken within the decontamination bay.

The court heard that the breaches came to light because of a voluntary disclosure by Magnox to the Nuclear Regulation Group (NRG) of the Environment Agency and the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) of the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) in 2004.

Staff working to clear sludge from the sump realised that when full of water, levels in the sump fell and when empty, the sump was backfilling by a couple of inches a day. A pump was immediately brought in and all liquid and sludge carefully removed from the sump.

Magnox said in a statement that the charges covered a period going back almost 20 years, when the Bradwell Site was run and operated by “very different legal entities” to those who manage and operate it today.

The Bradwell site hosts two shut-down Magnox gas-cooled reactors that are both undergoing decommissioning.

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