Call for inquiry into 165 nuclear accidents

for Sunday Herald, 02 August 2009

The Scottish National Party is calling for an investigation after it was revealed that there have been 165 leaks and fires at the UK’s nuclear plants over the last eight years.

According to a parliamentary answer from the House of Commons, there have been 83  escapes of coolant from reactors and 82 fires since 2001. Six fires and nine leaks have happened in the last six months.

One of the nuclear sites with the most incidents was Hunterston in North Ayrshire, which recorded 24. There were also eight fires or leaks at Torness in East Lothian, seven at Dounreay in Caithness and one at the Rosyth naval dockyard in Fife.

“This catalogue of fires and leaks is extremely disturbing, and the obvious fear is what could have happened if any one of these incidents had not been detected in time,” said the SNP’s energy spokesperson in Westminster, Mike Weir.

“It paints a very unsettling picture about the state these installations are in, and how they are operating. I have now written to the Health and Safety Executive’s Nuclear Directorate asking them to investigate whether current safeguards are adequate.”

Weir also accused the UK government of trying to “soften up” the public for a new programme of nuclear reactors in England. “These incidents are clearly inconvenient for UK ministers who seem more interested in selling the idea of new generation of reactors than telling us about the dangers of the existing ones,” he said.

The Health and Safety Executive has previously pointed out that nuclear plants were encouraged to report every incident. This helped ensure a “healthy regulatory culture” and encouraged operators to learn from experience, it said.

Comments

[Jeremy]

The story neglects to mention that there are 19 nuclear power reactors in the UK, plus dozens more nuclear facilities.

165 events over 8 years at 19 reactors works out at about 1 per year per reactor. There is no mention of how large, or small, or tiny any of these events are.

So was it deliberate to leave out the number of reactors, so as to give the reader little chance of getting the real picture?