Nuclear safety

Nuclear power plants have had thousands of leaks, breakdowns or other events over the past seven years, but the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII), part of the HSE, lacks the inspectors to police the industry adequately, according to a previously unseen official report.

The document, written by the government’s chief nuclear inspector, Mike Weightman, and released under the Freedom of Information Act to the Observer newspaper last month, raises serious questions about safety in the industry.

The report discloses that between 2001 and 2008 there were 1,767 safety incidents across Britain’s nuclear plants. About half were subsequently judged by inspectors as serious enough “to have had the potential to challenge a nuclear safety system”.

In an accident at Sizewell A in Suffolk in January 2007, cooling water leaked from a pond containing highly radioactive spent fuel. The operator was not prosecuted for breaching safety rules, according to the NII, partly because its resources were “stretched”.

The NII admitted to being 26 inspectors short of the 192 it needs to regulate existing facilities.