11 June 2014
Britain’s nuclear bomb factories have had three safety awards withdrawn because of a major fire, and they are now under investigation for faulty fire alarms in radioactive waste buildings.
AWE, a private consortium that operates nuclear weapons facilities at Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire for the Ministry of Defence, has been forced to return “gold awards” it won from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA). This follows a £200,000 fine imposed in 2013 for breaching safety rules during a fire at an explosives plant that injured a worker in 2010.
At the same time the government’s safety watchdog, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), is considering legal enforcement action against AWE over two recent incidents in which building fire detection systems were found to be defective. One detector at a medium-level radioactive facility had been out of action for “an extended period”.
Critics say that the AWE has a poor fire safety record, and raise questions about its ability to ensure safety at Aldermaston and Burghfield. AWE, however, insists that it has taken action to rectify the problems and is working hard to improve safety.
Aldermaston suffered its worst fire in recent history just after 9 o’clock in the evening on 3 August 2010 when workers were making nitrocellulose lacquer for explosives. One worker was left with burns to his face and arm, a building was damaged, local residents were evacuated and roads closed.
AWE pleaded guilty at Reading Crown Court on 16 May 2013 to failing to ensure the safety of its employees in breach of the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act. The company was fined £200,000 and was ordered to pay over £80,000 in legal costs plus £2,500 compensation to the injured employee, Ashley Emery (29).
In the wake of the verdict, RoSPA re-examined the awards it had given to AWE since the fire. “The conclusion was that the three gold awards, presented for 2011, 2012 and 2013, were not appropriate,” said Dave Rawlins, the society’s awards manager.
“The 2011 award was downgraded to a bronze award and the awards for 2012 and 2013 were withdrawn completely. The rules and spirit of the scheme mean that RoSPA will always look into the appropriateness of awards it has made whenever there is a relevant development, such as a prosecution, or other related information, comes to light.”
AWE said that it agreed with RoSPA that it would be “appropriate to return the awards received since the fire to ensure that the integrity of the award scheme is maintained.”
AWE’s safety director, Julie Taylor, thought that this was the right thing to do. “AWE believes that only companies with consistently exemplary performance should be recognised with the highest levels of awards,” she said. “AWE remains fully committed to achieving the highest standards in safety performance.”
Problems with fire safety at Aldermaston and Burghfield, however, seem to have persisted. In February, AWE discovered and reported to the ONR two incidents involving faulty fire alarms in facilities holding radioactive material.
An ONR spokesman said: “AWE’s routine testing in an intermediate level waste facility revealed that, due to inadequate configuration of the fire detection system, one area had been without automatic fire detection for an extended period – it is not known at present how long this period was.”
On the second incident, he added: “Night time rectification work on a faulty detector had led to the undetected inhibition of automatic fire detection for a number of buildings holding radioactive material until it was uncovered by AWE’s follow up testing after about four days.”
ONR was “content” with AWE’s initial response to the incidents, but it was still investigating them and moves made to ensure they are not repeated, the ONR spokesman said. “We'll consider what measures are appropriate in line with our enforcement policy.”
AWE stressed that it had identified the problems with the fire detectors and reported them “openly and promptly” to the ONR. “Neither event involved a fire or resulted in any injury or exposure to radiation,” said an AWE spokeswoman.
But Pete Wilkinson, director of Nuclear Information Service in Reading, pointed out that ONR was giving AWE enhanced regulatory attention. “Nuclear safety at the factory can hardly be said to meet gold star standards,” he said.
“AWE's recent record on fire safety is not good and despite claims by the company that improvements have been made since the 2010 fire at Aldermaston, there are obviously still problems at the site. The issues over safety management at AWE sites also raise questions about the competence of AWE to control the establishment.”
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