Sellafield, on the coast at Cumbria
It's fourteen years overdue, but we're still applauding the European Commission for forcing nuclear company BNFL to clean up a dangerous spent nuclear fuel pond at the notorious Sellafield site in Cumbria.
The B30 nuclear storage pond is so old that there are inadequate records of exactly what nuclear materials the plant contains. Estimates put the amount of plutonium in B30 at 1.3 tonnes.
Plutonium is one of the deadliest substances mankind has ever created. Inhalation of a single microgram of plutonium, smaller than a speck of dust, can cause fatal lung cancer. There is no safe level of exposure for humans, and once it is inside the body, it will remain there for a very long time - longer than the average human life span.
This week, the European Commission threatened to take the UK to court for failing to provide information about the nuclear material stored in B30 and for not giving European safety inspectors proper access to the site.
If the UK doesn't come up with a good reason why it has failed on these counts, it could face legal action in the European Court of Justice, the European Union's (EU) highest court.
B30 was used as a storage pond for spent Magnox fuel from the 1950s to 1985. Some of the spent fuel was of military origin and probably came from Calder Hall and Chapelcross.
The UK Government and BNFL have prevaricated for years about this waste, despite the fact that they knew there was a huge problem. BNFL concocted various informal clean-up plans over the years, but none were ever implemented.
Officials from the EU's atomic energy agency (Euratom) first visited the open air pond in 1986 and have carried out annual inspections since 1991. The agency has complained of being given poor access to the site, and accused BNFL (British Nuclear Fuels Limited) of providing unsatisfactory records.
The Commission itself failed to act on B30 for the past fourteen years, and during that time has repeatedly told the European Parliament and the Council that the situation at Sellafield was fine.
