9 months ago
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As anti-nuclear campaigners prepare for their walk from Trawsfynydd to the Eisteddfod at Boduan this week (2-6 August) to protest the threat of new nuclear in North Wales, with the full support of the UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities, the NFLAs cannot help but feel that their timing is very apt as today (July 31) we mark the 30th anniversary of an accident at the former Wylfa Magnox nuclear power plant on Ynys Mon (Anglesey).
The Wylfa nuclear plant incident was not reported in the media for days afterwards and has now largely been forgotten – yet it led to the plant’s operators Nuclear Electric receiving a heavy fine with the Chief Inspector of Nuclear Installations telling the court that it was potentially the most serious incident he had come across in Britain during his career.
In the evening of 31 July 1993, during the routine refuelling of Reactor 1, part of a crane in use at the time – a grab – broke off and fell 25 feet into the reactor, becoming jammed in a refuelling channel. Although plant operators noted the part was missing at 9pm, instead of shutting down the reactor, they tried instead to locate the part. The reactor was only finally shut down at 4.45am despite the risk that the blockage could have led to a rise in pressure. The grab broke off because of a defective weld that management should be noticed in normal equipment inspections and the failure to shut down the reactor was attributed to the company having no standing instructions to do so.
Nuclear Electric initially reported the accident as an operational ‘anomaly’, rating it zero on the international scale for assessing nuclear events – meaning it had no significance for safety. One month later, it was reclassified with a rating of two – meaning it had no significant environmental impact but involved some internal plant failure. The company also pointedly failed to notify the public or the press, leading respected independent nuclear consultant John Large to suggest there was a cover-up.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) subsequently sought to prosecute Nuclear Electric at Mold Crown Court in September 1995, where the company entered a guilty plea to four charges under the Health and Safety at Work Act.
In the hearing, the HSE expressed a view that a ‘meltdown’ could have occurred, which was reinforced by Chief Nuclear Inspector Dr Sam Harbison who told the court that it was ‘potentially’ the most serious nuclear accident to have happened during his time in office, identifying that with one more misfortune the core could have caught fire, leading to a ‘serious release of radioactive material’.
Prosecuting barrister Hugh Carlisle QC charged that Nuclear Electric had refused to shut down the reactor because of commercial considerations, being fearful of the financial penalties they would incur, and worryingly it was recounted that plant staff appeared to have a dismissive, almost fatalistic, attitude to safety being accused of ‘laughing and giggling’ during a call with National Grid to discuss a plant shutdown.
Although fining the defendants £250,000 for breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act, the trial judge found inexplicably that Nuclear Electric ‘generally have maintained the highest standards of safety and observe, in practice, the principle of the paramountcy of safety’, even though this was Nuclear Electric’s second prosecution for the incident, having been fined £34,000 in March 1994 for deliberately leaking radioactive sulphur-35 and carbon-14 gasses into the air after the accident.
Thirty years on and NFLA Welsh Chair Councillor Sue Lent had this to say:
“Although we recognise that technology, safety procedures and inspection regimes have moved on in the intervening thirty years, generating power by nuclear fission still presents some operational risks and there is always the chance of an accident, however unlikely.
“One of the primary issues the marchers will be highlighting in their walk from the former nuclear plant at Trawsfynydd to the Eisteddfod site at Boduan will be concerns about nuclear safety.
“The impact of an accident at any future nuclear plant located at Traws or Wylfa could be very great and on Ynys Mon there is a further complication – the possibility that it might necessitate the evacuation of the whole population of a large island in a short time.
“And, of course, there is also the radioactive contamination of local soil, watercourses and air which overtime inevitably occurs around nuclear plants, and in addition there is a requirement to safely store and monitor highly toxic, hot radioactive waste on site for many years.
“The NFLAs believes the focus in Wales should instead be on generating truly green energy using renewable technologies not nuclear, for who has ever heard of a meltdown involving a solar farm or a wind turbine?”
The NFLAs have sent a message of solidarity and support to the Traws-Boduan marchers.
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For more information, please contact NFLA Secretary, Richard Outram by email to richard.outram@manchester.gov.uk or telephone 07583 097793
