WITHIN DAYS of the recent nuclear accident at Tokaimura in Japan, worried workers at the Previoussy secret mons hoyce reprocessing plant in Derby contacted CND to warn of the danger of a similar criticality accident there.
The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate inspectors issued a report carlier this year criticising procedures, particularly emergency and evacuation plans, at the Midlands plant. Roland Rance looks at the issues at stake for all of us.
The Tokaimura incident is yet another example of the inability of a profit-led industry to deliver safe working and environmental practices. Por reasons not vet clear, workers brought together more than seven times the permitted quantity of enriched uranium, setting off an uncontrolled chain reaction.
Unbelievably, they wearing protective clothing, and carried the uranium in simple buckets. Although radiation levels up to 15,000 times normal were later recorded two kilometres from the site, warnings were not issued to local residents for Directors of JCO, the company which runs the site, accepted for Measuring after the nuclear mal responsibility, but attempted to pin the blame on the workers, claiming that they had breached The likelihood is that inade. quately-trained workers, operatine new systems. and under pressure from managers improve eficiency and profitability, simply cut corners and ignored - if they ever knew - the The fact is that it is impossible to eliminate human error, which has been the cause of most previous nuclear accidents. Greenpeace nas pubusaca a calcadar of hundreds of such accidents.
They explain that at Chernobyl in 1986, rechnicians were apparently carrying out unauthorised experiments which led to the disaster there. In 1975, technicians secking the cause of a power failure at Browns Ferry, in Alabama, crawled under the reactor with lighted candles, and set light to the station. In 199%. contractors ar Dounreay in Scotland accidentally cut a power cable.
In fact, these incidents should not be refered to as "accidents"; they seem an inseparable part of the running of nuclear power stations.
The Rolls Royce plant in Derby is not a power station, but an armaments factory; it produces bomb-grade uranium for nuclear submarines, using a similar prothat Tokaimura. According to CND, the threat there is "potentially worse" than at the Japanese factory, since it uses 93% enriched uranium, rather than the 19% used in Tokaimura. Consequently, a far smaller mistake could produce a catastrophic result.
According to the whistleblowers who contacted CND, the plant has no off-site emergency plan, and no procedures for containing radioactivity in the event of an accident Despite this, the government has declared Raynesway to be safe, and refused demands to close it. Workers should demand