Plutonium nitrate leaked from a corroded pipe to the containment cell and accumulated as a crystalline solid mass. There was no release to the Operations Areas nor to the Environment. The spillage was removed, the plant repaired and restarted. The evaporator cell incident at Sellafield which involved the recovery of radioactive liquor and was safely and successfully dealt with, has now been reclassified from Level 1 to Level 3 on the International Nuclear Event Scale. The incident on September 8 involved an escape of plutonium nitrate from defective pipework into a contained cell, but did not result in any release of radioactivity to the environment or plant operating areas and no one was exposed to any abnormal radiation exposure. However, it has now been reclassified to Level 3 on the scale following a thorough examination which concluded that the installed safety devices were not monitoring adequately under the existing circumstances. As it was, the plutonium nitrate which escaped into the cell was safety contained and a comprehensive programme of work has since been undertaken not only in carrying out repairs but also in the installation of various equipment and monitoring instrumentation designed to give earlier warning of any similar failure in future and ease recovery operations.
Everywhere you look, the nuclear industry’s hype machine is in overdrive. Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and the UK government all tout small modular reactors as the silver bullet for climate change and energy security. Tech billionaires are hiring nuclear veterans. Wall Street is whispering about “round-the-clock power” for artificial intelligence data centers. For those old enough […]
Kernenergie en veiligheid: A wargame sought to test if a major radiological release that would prompt the evacuation of millions of civilians in South Korea could distract key US allies from assisting and rebuffing an all-out military invasion of Taiwan. The short answer was yes. The game originally presumed that China, wanting to keep the […]
Big batteries and EVs to the rescue again as faults with new nuclear plant cause chaos on Nordic grids The Finnish nuclear power plant Olkiluoto was finally connected to the grid last year, at an estimated cost of €11 billion compared to the original budget of €3 billion. That cost blowout forced its developer, the […]
A vast subsea nuclear graveyard planned to hold Britain’s burgeoning piles of radioactive waste is set to become the biggest, longest-lasting and most expensive infrastructure project ever undertaken in the UK. The project [UK's nuclear waste dump] is now predicted to take more than 150yrs to complete with lifetime costs of £66bn in today’s money...The […]
Last year, the Dutch Province of Limburg started an alliance in which, besides the local government, research institutes, small nuclear reactor (SMR) developers, utilities, industrial customers and funders cooperated. With this "Limburg SMR alliance" Limburg tried to lead the way towards an SMR in Limburg. The preferred site for a first SMR would be Chemelot, […]
