UK court fines Sellafield £700,000 pounds for illegally dumping radioactive material

A UK court fined Sellafield Ltd's nuclear waste site £700,000 pounds yesterday for illegally dumping radioactive material, in what is seen as the latest controversy to hit the industry.

The UK's Office of Nuclear Regulation (ONR) said Carlisle Crown Court had imposed the fine on Sellafield Limited for sending several bags of radioactive waste to a general landfill site in Cumbria, rather than to a specialist facility as required under the law.

According to Ian Parker of the Environment Agency, which carried out the investigation with the ONR, while the incident did not lead to any significant harm being caused to the public or to the environment, the failings by Sellafield Ltd that led to the incident were serious.

He added, the agency considered that on this occasion, Sellafield Limited fell well short of the high standards, which were expected from them.

Since 2008 the Nuclear Management Partners, a consortium of French nuclear technology company Areva, UK engineering firm AMEC and US construction firm URS, has been operating the reprocessing plant in north-western England.

Earlier this year local politicians in Cumbria rejected plans for advancing a £ 12 billion underground nuclear waste storage site.

According to experts, Britain would need to build new storage to deal with waste from current reactors and new units, material that would remain hazardous far into the future.

Sellafield Limited admitted sending four bags, which should have been sent to the Low Level Waste Repository at Drigg to Lillyhall landfill in Workington in April 2010. The bags contained plastic and metal waste, from its plant.

According to Sellafield spokesman Tom Foster, extra safety checks had been implemented at the plant.