Damning report reveals series of safety lapses at Sellafield

Safety alarms have been routinely ignored, operating instructions flouted, and safety equipment left broken at the controversial Sellafield nuclear plant, a devastating official inquiry has found.

The inquiry report - one of the most damning ever on a British nuclear installation - condemns "an alarm-tolerant culture", "long-standing failings in some key safety arrangements" and a "failure to learn from previous events" at the Cumbrian complex.

The accident at the Thorp reprocessing plant - which was disclosed by The Independent on Sunday in 2005 - has kept the plant closed ever since, and was the focus of the investigation.

Some 83,000 litres of highly radioactive liquid leaked at the plant for at least eight months before the spill was detected.

Yesterday, the former environment minister Michael Meacher said that the report revealed "culpable negligence of the most dangerous kind".

The British Nuclear Group, which runs Sellafield, says it "acknowledges the key findings" of the report and says they "mirror many of our own".

It said it had "implemented a large number of improvements". However, the report is bound to add to calls for the closure of Thorp and for the running down of the whole complex. Environmentalists will argue that countless attempts to improve it have failed.

Dr Mike Weightman, HM Chief Inspector of Nuclear Installations, says that the investigation found "a significant prolonged reduction in attention to the high standards demanded for the unique nature of nuclear operations, something we are not prepared to tolerate."