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Subject: Sellafield Update: MOX, Site Safety, High Level Waste, Prosecution.

Friday 18th February 2000 must be recorded as the blackest day in BNFL's 30 year chequered history, with the publication of three damning reports by the Health & Safety Executive's Nuclear Installations Inspectorate. Publication of the reports, coinciding with BNFL executives' last-ditch attempts to patch up the company's shattered MOX relationship with Japanese customers, has brought combined criticism of the Company from all quarters including the UK Government.

MOX falsification scandal:

NII's report, published one week after their Director of Nuclear Safety had been to Japan to explain the findings to the Japanese Government and Industry, concludes that a systematic management failure allowed individuals to falsify quality assurance records for MOX pellet measurements. Their investigation at the small MOX Demonstration Facility (MDF) at Sellafield found that 31 Lots of MOX pellets (around 4000 pellets per Lot) had been subject of data falsification since 1996. The affected Lots included those made up into fuel assemblies and already shipped to Japan in 1999. Earlier shipments to Switzerland (Beznau) and Germany (Unterweser) were also affected.

The investigation by the NII considered three possible types of data falsification. 1. Copying a whole spreadsheet and replacing some data entries, 2. Copying whole rows of three data entries within a spreadsheet (the three diameter readings for one pellet) and 3. Other manipulation and invention. A majority of the falsifications found came under category 1 and related to the secondary manual check carried out by workers on a randomly selected 200 pellets from each Lot of 4000.

NII were unable to establish a motive for the falsification, but suggested a combination of poor ergonomic design of the plant, the tedium of the job or the ease with which the computer data logging system could be manipulated. Currently closed down, MDF will not be permitted by NII to restart production until 'deficiencies found in the quality checking process have been rectified, the management of the plant improved and the operators either replaced or retrained to bring the safety culture in the plant up to the standards the Health & Safety Executive requires for a nuclear installation'.

Since MDF started operating in 1993, 6 consignments of MOX fuel (a total of 36 assemblies) have been delivered to overseas customers. Of these 6 consignments, four have now been found to have contained either falsified quality assurance data or faulty fuel. In 1998, faulty MOX fuel rods were returned to Sellafield by the operators of the Swiss Beznau power station.

BNFL's poor management of MDF and their dishonesty about data falsification has been roundly condemned by UK Government which has already had to send a high level team of Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) officials to Japan to apologise to their counterparts. Energy Minister Helen Liddell has described BNFL's behaviour as completely unacceptable and has called for a 'root and branch' review of BNFL management. DTI's Secretary of State Stephen Byers has highlighted funadamental flaws in BNFL management. Calls for senior management heads to roll by both Liddell and Byers have been widely echoed in all strands of the British media. Sellafield's local MP Jack Cunningham has called for sackings up to Boardroom level.

Five shopfloor workers have been dismissed by BNFL since the MOX scandal came to light last September. The three workers originally sacked have lodged a claim for unfair dismissal with an Industrial Tribunal. The other two workers are still persuing their case through the company's internal disciplinary system. Represented by the GMB trades union, all five workers consider they have been scapegoated by BNFL, and the NII report's crticism of systematic management failure has brought renewed calls from workers and others that some managers and even members of the BNFL Board, including the Chief Executive John Taylor, should now be sacked.

BNFL's future MOX business now hangs in the balance as the Japanese Government and Industry decide whether or not to continue dealing with BNFL as a supplier of MOX. This may take many months and is likely to delay even further any UK Government's decision on BNFL's new Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP), already delayed for three years. Ministers' uncertainties as to the viability of SMP will have deepened as a result of the current fiasco, and they will be assessing the likely knock-on effect on existing customers in Germany and Switzerland . The ultimate humiliation for BNFL will be the Japanese Government's insistence that the MOX fuel shipped to Japan last year, and subject to falsification, be returned to Sellafield at BNFL's cost. Such a shipment, requiring prior approval of the United States and others, would have to be undertaken by BNFL's converted gunboats against a tide of international condemnation.

Sellafield Safety Audit - NII team Inspection. Following an increase in accidents and events at Sellafield in early 1999, NII inspectors carried out a three week inspection of Sellafield last September (see CORE Briefing 14/99). Their findings were published last Friday along with their MOX investigation report.

In their main conclusions, NII highlights the lack of a high quality safety management system on the site, and also the lack of sufficient resources to implement such a system. NII was also highly critical of the standard of safety documentation at the plant and, as a result of efforts to make the company attractive for privatisation, the fact that managers were having to divert as much as 50% of their time from operational matters - adversely affecting plant safety.

Making 28 recommendations to improve safety throughput the site and at all levels of the workforce, NII have given BNFL 2 months in which to produce a programme of response to the recommendations.. Laurence Williams, for NII, has said that control and supervision of operations at Sellafield is of paramount importance and NII will use its regulatory powers to ensure that the company implements the report's recommendations to reverse the decline in safety performance at the site. Should progress be inadequate, NII would not hesitate to use its enforcement powers, including closing down the site.

High Level Liquid Wastes at Sellafield. In the third report to have been published last Friday, NII has published its updated safety review of BNFL's management of HLW at Sellafield. NII's first Review was published in 1995. Inspectors remain critical of the apparent inability by BNFL to treat the backlog of High Level Wastes, stored in a number of tanks, which result from Sellafield's reprocessing operations (see CORE Briefing 13/99).

The wastes are accumulating faster than BNFL is able to deal with them at Sellafield's Vitrification Plant, where the liquid is turned into glass. There is currently around 1300 cubic metres of HLW at Sellafield.The Vitrification Plant currently has two operating production lines, both of which have significantly underperformed. A third production line is due to open at the end of this year and with all three lines operating BNFL plans to catch up with the backlog of which the NII is so critical. Despite previous threats from the NII, BNFL's programme has remained behind target and NII has again threatened that they will stop reprocessing operations at Sellafield if BNFL's vitrification performance does not improve.

NII are requiring BNFL to reduce stocks of liquid HLW to a 'buffer' quantity - the minimum required for safe and efficient operation. This reduction is to be completed by around 2015 .

Prosecution. As a final blow on the blackest of Fridays for BNFL, NII announced that the Company was to be prosecuted for an incident at Sellafield in March last year when two workers received burns following a spill of nitric acid in Sellafield's newly built Solvent Treatment Plant (see CORE Briefing 5/99). The £60m plant treats the backlog of acid used historically in reprocessing operations. The prosecution is expected to take place this Spring.

Ends.

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