nuclear-news

And, in a separate incident, a dockyard worker in the city breathed in radioactive material, an investigation of incidents involving the nuclear industry has found.

But in both cases, The Times reports, the nuclear safety regulator deemed the incidents as being of no nuclear safety significance.

The decision that these and dozens more apparent safety breaches at nuclear installations around the country pose no danger has alarmed some scientists, who told the newspaper they should have been taken much more seriously.

Among the other incidents reported to the Office for Nuclear Regulation but dismissed as no more than ‘anomalies’ were three road accidents involving vehicles carrying nuclear material, the discovery of radioactive hydrogen in groundwater around the Dungeness nuclear power station in Kent and at least 70 safety incidents on the UK’s main nuclear warhead base at Aldermaston in Berkshire.

The Times reports that brief accounts of all the incidents were quietly published earlier this year.

They record events in the three years up to March 15 in what is said to be the first report of its kind.

The Office for Nuclear Regulation has defended its classification of the incidents, including the accidental firing of the torpedo at a nuclear submarine in dock in Plymouth and the ingestion of potentially deadly isotope of cobalt 13, breathed in by a Devonport Dockyard worker……..http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/torpedo-fired-at-plymouth-nuclear-submarine-dock-posed-no-danger/story-30013772-detail/story.html