Shut down Sellafield for good, says Roche

ENVIRONMENT Minister Dick Roche yesterday called for the Sellafield nuclear waste plant to be shut permanently after the operators were fined £500,000 (€743,393) for a radioactive leak that took eight months to detect.

Around 83,000 litres of acid containing 20 tonnes of uranium and 160kg of plutonium leaked from a broken pipe into a sealed concrete tank at Cumbria’s THORP nuclear reprocessing site, which is just 110 miles (180 kilometres) from the Irish coast.

Carlisle Crown Court was told yesterday of a catalogue of safety failings at the plant, while the judge who fined the operators said the place “did not have a good safety record”.