Nuclear firm Sellafield has been fined £700,000 and ordered to pay more than £72,000 costs for sending bags of radioactive waste to a landfill site.

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Sellafield fined for sending radioactive waste to landfill

Published on the 15 June
2013

The error was attributed to failures in leadership and management at the site.
The bags, which contained waste such as plastic, tissues and clothing, should have been sent to a specialist facility that treats and stores low-level radioactive waste. But instead a number of mistakes led to them being sent to Lillyhall landfill site which deals with conventional waste in Workington, Cumbria.
This breached the conditions of Sellafield’s environmental permit and the Carriage of Dangerous Goods and Use of Transportable Pressure Equipment Regulations.
At Carlisle Crown Court the firm was fined £700,000 and ordered to pay an additional £72,635.34 costs.
Sellafield found the error was caused by the wrong configuration of a new monitor which passed the bags as “general” waste, making them exempt from strict disposal controls.
The Environment Agency and the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) carried out an investigation and the bags were retrieved from the landfill and returned to Sellafield.
They were then disposed of correctly.


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Leak in Hanford double-shell tank getting worse

KING5.com

Credit: KING 5 News

Hanford Site in eastern Washington
Credit: SkyKING
An aerial view of part of the Hanford Site, looking east from the Columbia River toward the Central Plateau.

Access to the Hanford Site is restricted. The 586-square-mile reserve is one of the most contaminated places in the Western Hemisphere, thanks to decades of plutonium production for the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

by SUSANNAH FRAME / KING 5 News

Posted on June 13, 2013 at 11:11 AM

Updated Thursday, Jun 13 at 5:06 PM

The leak in a massive underground double-shell nuclear waste tank at the Hanford Site has grown significantly since the leak was first announced to the public last fall, according to sources who have seen new inspection video and photographs.
The tank -- known as AY-102 -- holds 860,000 gallons of radioactive waste generated during decades of plutonium production at the southeastern Washington reservation.

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