Dounreay, part of £3.3bn industry, fined just £140,000 for radioactive dumping

Published on Friday 16 February 2007 02:19

ENVIRONMENTAL campaigners last night condemned as "paltry" a £140,000 fine on the operator of the Dounreay nuclear plant for illegally dumping radioactive waste.

Describing the incident as "one of the nastiest forms of discharge ever", campaigners said the fine sent out the wrong message to polluters.

The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) last week pleaded guilty at Wick Sheriff Court to four charges under the Radioactive Substances Act. The breaches happened over more than 20 years at the Caithness site.

Sheriff Andrew Berry said he was fining the operators for "very grave errors". He said: "Clearly, these four charges will attract public concern as they relate to the illegal discharge of radioactive waste over a long period of time."

The offences carried unlimited penalties and the UKAEA, which had a turnover of 315 million in the UK last year and a made a 3.1 million profit, could have been made to pay millions of pounds in fines. According to the Nuclear Industry Association, the sector as a whole adds about 3.3 billion to UK Gross Domestic Product.

Lorraine Mann, convener of Scotland Against Nuclear Dumping, said: "This was probably one of the nastiest forms of discharge ever in the history of the nuclear industry in the UK. It really is very disappointing that it is hardly even a slap on the wrist."

Dr Eleanor Scott, a Highlands and Islands Green MSP, called the fine "peanuts", and added: "I would be concerned that any other nuclear installation could take this as a sign they could get off relatively lightly with any similar incident.

"But I hope the fine will be seen in context, in that these were offences that took place some time ago and any offence that took place now would be treated in a far more punitive way."

She said the issue of penalties for environmental crimes was an area which needed to be examined. She added: "I would like to see a lot more stringent fines for environmental crime. This is a special case because of its historic nature, but most environmental crimes are not historic and therefore the fines should be at a level we would expect."

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency, whose investigations led to the charges being brought, said the fine should serve as a stark warning to operators that disregarded pollution laws. Its chief executive, Campbell Gemmell, said: "This outcome serves as a valuable lesson to UKAEA and others that poor waste-management practices will not be tolerated."

UKAEA bosses admitted a single charge of disposing of radioactive waste at a landfill site at the plant between 1963 and 1975. They also pleaded guilty to three charges of allowing nuclear fuel particles to be released through drains into the Pentland Firth between 1963 and 1984.

The court earlier heard that fuel fragments which were supposed to be disposed of in a storage shaft had instead been placed in 46,000 cubic metres of landfill. The error came to light in July 1999 when work was done at the site. Between December 1963 and December 1984, nuclear particles had entered the sea from a drain at Dounreay. UKAEA also admitted allowing radioactive fragments to escape from two other pipes. Fiscal Alasdair MacDonald told the court six of the particles recovered were considered "very dangerous" and could be fatal if ingested.

Investigators also found the radioactivity of some fragments in one of the drains was 26 times above the annual permitted dose for an individual member of the public.

Sheriff Berry said he had taken into account the authority's guilty plea, which had prevented the need for a trial. He said he also considered that any fine would be borne by the taxpayer, as the UKAEA was a publicly funded organisation. He fined UKAEA 40,000 for dumping the waste and 100,000 for releasing the particles.

Outside the court, Dr John Crofts, UKAEA's director of safety, said: "It is a fairly stiff penalty, but it fully reflects the gravity of the offence and its continuing environmental effect.

"It draws a line under the event and allows us to concentrate on the future of cleaning up the site and minimising any environmental effect that these particles have."

Dr Crofts claimed the fine was significant because it equated to several salaries at Dounreay.

In all, about 1,200 radioactive particles - fragments of spent uranium fuel about the size of a grain of sand - have been found on the seabed and on beaches near the complex, although it is believed hundreds of thousands could have been discharged.

A spokesman for the facility said that 100,000 particles would occupy the volume of an egg-cup and one million was equivalent in volume to less than a pint. He said all the particles detected to date on public beaches had been below the level that independent experts considered a significant radiological risk.

Particles found on the foreshore at Dounreay and the seabed on average tended to be 100 times more radioactive and could be fatal if swallowed.