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| 05.10.00 BNFL Court Conviction. No 17/00 [ 6 October 2000] |
| At Whitehaven Magistrates Court today, BNFL was convicted and fined £24,000 (+ costs of £4817.50) after pleading to four charges relating to sealed radiation sources at Sellafield. The prosecution was brought by the HSE’s Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII). In evidence to the court, NII detailed the offences which had taken place between January 1999 and May this year. Three of the offences, all under the 1999 Ionising Radiations Regulations, involved a failure to account for and keep records of the quantity and location of a number of sealed souirces; a failure to carry out regular tests to detect leakage from one particular sealed source; a failure to take steps to account for another sealed source. The offences constituted a contravention of Regulation 28, 27(3) and 28 respectively. The maximum penalty in law for each of these offences is £5000. Because BNFL had not previously been convicted of contravening these Regulations, the Magistrates fined them £3000, £4000 and £3000 for each offence respectively. During the hearing the court was told that following the initial discovery in January last year that a sealed source was missing, NII had begun an investigation involving a number of sealed radiation source stores on the Sellafield site. Finding evidence that there had been a failure by BNFL to properly manage and control a number of sealed sources, NII issued an Improvement Notice to the company in March 1999, requiring compliance by September. Despite granting a further extension to the end of December 1999, NII subsequently found that the Improvement Notice had still not been fully complied with. This failure to comply with the Improvement Notice constituted the fourth offence heard by today’s court. A breach of Section 33(1) of the Health & Safety at Work Act 1974, BNFL was fined £14,000 with the magistrates noting that it had taken the company over 12 months to comply with the Regulations. The maximum penalty available to the court was £20,000. In their defence BNFL admitted that they had underestimated the work required to bring the sealed sources in full compliance with the law. BNFL is responsible for over 3000 sealed radiation sources at the Sellafield site. Used for control and calibration purposes, the sources are held in 171 source stores. In the course of their investigations NII had checked 11 of these stores. Though the fines imposed by the magistrates were not the maximum available to them, NII commented after the hearing that the fine of £14,000 relating to the Improvement Notice was the heaviest yet imposed anywhere in the UK for such an offence. In June this year BNFL and BNFL Engineering Ltd were fined £40,000 at Carlisle Crown Court after a spill of 1500 gallons of nitric acid at the Solvent Treatment Plant. Two fitters and one site fireman were injured. Ends. |
