nuclear power - a set back?

Leak found at British nuke plant: report

About 83,000 litres of highly radioactive liquid leaked unnoticed for up to nine months from a ruptured pipe at the Sellafield nuclear plant in Britain's worst nuclear accident in years, the Independent on Sunday newspaper reports.

In a front-page report, it said the leak - equal to filling half an Olympic swimming pool - was detected on April 19 and that it was "the result of a catalogue of human and engineering errors".

The leak, at the Thorp reprocessing plant at Sellafield in Cumbria, north-western England, has prompted a review by the British Nuclear Group of other potential leaks and a campaign against "complacency" among staff.

The Independent on Sunday said the British Nuclear Group, which runs Sellafield, has acknowledged that workers "failed to respond to indicators' warning [that] a badly designed pipe had sprung a leak as long ago as last August".

It added that the incident was classified as "level three" in gravity by the International Atomic Energy Authority.

The most serious level on the scale is seven, a point reserved for incidents like the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

Work to pump the so-called "radioactive liquor" back into the Thorp system began last Monday, the newspaper said.

The last level-three incident in Britain, also at Sellafield, was in September 1992, the newspaper said, adding that the leak could upset government and industry hopes of building new nuclear power plants.

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Hope there's no ripple-through effect on uranium stocks......

I hold PDN and SMM