ACCIDENTS

Power plants that are not constructed or maintained properly can create major disasters.

Transporting nuclear fuel can also be dangerous.

The accident that occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine in 1986 is considered the worst accident in the history of nuclear power. Large areas of the Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were badly contaminated and resulted in the evacuation and resettlement of around 300,000 people. A 2005 report attributes 56 direct deaths from the accident but thousands more may ultimately die from long term accident related illnesses. This has also impacted on the environment with long term radioactive contamination.

On May 9, 2005 it was announced that THORP at Sellafield suffered a large leak of a highly radioactive solution, which first started in August, 2004. British Nuclear Group's board of inquiry determined that a design error led to the leak, while defective culture at the plant delayed detection for nine months. Read full article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THORP (Wikipedia)

The leak spewed more than 20 tonnes of uranium and 160kg of plutonium onto a floor.

"In February 2006, an atomic energy firm responsible for a radioactive leak from a lorry travelling across northern England was fined £250,000 after admitting that it breached health and safety and radioactive material regulations.

A highly radioactive beam was emitted from a protective flask as it was driven 130 miles and it was ´pure good fortune´ that no one was dangerously contaminated when a plug was left off a specially-built 2.5-tonne container carrying radioactive material on a lorry, Leeds Crown Court heard.

The flask, belonging to AEA Technology, was being used to transport part of a piece of cancer treatment equipment which had been decommissioned at Cookridge Hospital, Leeds, to the Windscale site on the Sellafield complex in Cumbria on March 11 2002.

The judge said that staff at AEA Technology - a privatised arm of the UK Atomic Energy Agency - had acted in a ´cavalier and somewhat indifferent´ manner with a ´degree of arrogance´ towards their duties. It was, he added, a matter of luck that no one was injured". (The Times, 20/2/06)

A leading government-backed scientist from East Anglia University discovered that plutonium particles, concentrated in waves breaking on the shore, were being blown over West Cumbria from Sellafield, as far as 37 miles inland. This was confirmed by analysis of vacuum cleaner house dust samples taken up and down the coast by a National Radiological Protection Board investigation. (www.corecumbria.co.uk).