Atomic energy authority fined over radiation alert

The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) was fined pounds 8,000 and ordered to pay pounds 10,510 costs yesterday, following an incident at its Harwell laboratory in Oxfordshire, when two workers were exposed to radiation. Magistrates at Didcot were told that during decommissioning operations at the laboratory's defunct Pluto reactor last April, a worker sawed into a gas bottle without knowing it contained radioactive tritium gas. He and a workmate received radiation doses up to 12 per cent of the annual safe limit during the incident in the active handling bay at the laboratory.

The UKAEA admitted three charges alleging it breached ionising radiation regulations of 1985, in a prosecution brought jointly by the Health and Safety Executive's Nuclear Installations Inspectorate and by H M Inspectorate of Pollution. The laboratory was prosecuted for two similar tritium leaks in July 1990, when it pleaded guilty and was fined a total of pounds 3,000.