Dounreay tightens safety in wake of £15,000 fine over contaminated staff

Published on Friday 13 July 2007 01:11

THE operator of the Dounreay nuclear plant claims it has tightened safety procedures after being fined £15,000 yesterday for health and safety failings that led to a worker breathing in plutonium.

Two employees at the Caithness site were exposed to the radioactive material as they disposed of contaminated lead bricks in a laboratory last year. One received a plutonium intake which will remain in his system for life.

The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) admitted breaches of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 at Wick Sheriff Court.

The incident, which happened in the decontamination room in the plant's fuel cycle laboratory, known as the Marshall Lab, was reported to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) which issued the plant with two improvement notices after an investigation.

The court heard the workers, Brian Grant and Jennifer Chretien, had been asked to dispose of the lead bricks on 12 January, 2006. The bricks were not marked as radioactive and had not been stored in special protective drums. The employees were unaware of the necessary radiation protection measures involved.

Alasdair MacDonald, the procurator-fiscal said: "As a consequence the two workers were exposed to airborne radiation, contamination from plutonium."

Air samplers showed higher than normal radioactive levels and biological monitoring confirmed Mr Grant had received a plutonium intake.

The court heard the intake was 1.7 millisieverts. Mr MacDonald said: "Twenty millisieverts is the dose limit, but that intake will remain with that individual for the rest of his life."

David Stewart, UKAEA's solicitor, said Dounreay now has risk assessment documents in place and warnings that respirators should be worn when disposing of low level and intermediate level waste.

The plant also requires all items in transit for storage to be properly labelled and inspected.

Mr Stewart added: "There is absolutely no doubt this should not have happened. We put our hands up to that. All we can do is make sure that this does not happen again."

Sheriff Sutherland told UKAEA: "I consider this to be a serious breach - exposing two people to serious risk, resulting in one employee receiving a plutonium intake which will be lifelong."

Speaking after the case, Simon Middlemass, Dounreay's site director, accepted mistakes were made: "It should not have happened and we very quickly addressed a number of issues highlighted by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate.

"We should have robust processes right across the site to make sure these sort of things are properly recorded, the proper actions are taken, the risks assessed and all the employees understand what they should be doing in these circumstances.

"We have addressed all the issues raised. It has been a salutary lesson in safety thinking - you can always do better at these things."

Mr Grant, who still works for Dounreay, declined to comment.

Dr John Crofts, UKAEA's director of safety, added: "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."

Last month tests were carried out on ten workers at Dounreay when readings showed suspected plutonium near a manhole which was being inspected.

In February UKAEA was fined 140,000 for releasing radioactive particles into the sea and dumping radioactive waste.

30-YEAR SHUTDOWN

DOUNREAY was Britain's centre of fast-reactor research and development from 1954 until 1994.

The complex is now being decommissioned in a 2.9 billion clean-up operation which will see it returned to a near greenfield site over the next 30 years.

The plant's Marshall Lab, which was built in 1981, carried out development and proving trials for the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) at Sellafield. It also ran tests for the Japanese MOX (mixed-oxide fuel) reprocessing programme and for the EDRP (European Demonstration Reprocessing Plant) design.