UKAEA Fined £15,000 - MARSHALL LAB - IMPROVEMENTS TO PROCEDURES MADE

12th July 2007

Improvements have been made to the UKAEA's procedures for temporary waste storage following shortcomings identified by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate.

Speaking outside Wick Sheriff Court, where UKAEA was fined £15,000 after pleading guilty to the charge, Simon Middlemas, Dounreay's site director said "We accept some mistakes were made in the Marshall Lab at the beginning of last year resulting in a worker receiving a very minimal plutonium intake. It should not have happened and we, very quickly, addressed a number of issues highlighted by the NII."

UKAEA's director of safety, Dr John Crofts said "Our procedures have been tightened and a number of behavioural safety initiatives have been set in place to ensure this that type of incident should never occur again."

The Fuel Cycle Laboratory (known as the Marshall Lab) was built in 1981 and carried out development and proving trials for the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) at Sellafield, for the Japanese MOX (mixed-oxide fuel) reprocessing programme and for the EDRP (European Demonstration Reprocessing Plant) design. Work is now underway to decommission the plant.

The charge relates to an incident which occurred in January 2006 where two employees were found to have an elevated personal air sampler reading after undertaking some wok in the decontamination room located near the alpha lab. The work being carried out related to the storage of lead bricks and their subsequent disposal as intermediate level waste.