COMPLACENT plant operators took an astounding eight months to spot a massive leak of highly radioactive liquid at the UK’s Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) at Sellafield in Cumbria, an internal board of inquiry reported on 29 June. THORP is operated by BNG, a subsidiary of British Nuclear Fuels, which runs nuclear facilities in 16 countries.
The plant extracts plutonium and uranium from spent nuclear fuel, but production was halted indefinitely in April after cameras showed the floor of an unmanned stainless steel processing vessel had flooded. The 83 cubic metres of escaped liquor contained 20 tonnes of plutonium and…
