Worth Reading

UK Health and Safety Executive: Safety Audit of Dounreay 1998

The Dounreay nuclear establishment on the Northern coast of Scotland, where were operated the key demonstration facilities of the British plutonium industry, is going through troubled waters again. Although the Government had declared that the reprocessing plant on site would not engage into further reprocessing contracts and following an incident which led to a dangerous sixteen hour power cut, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) decided on a crash safety audit of the plant. The HSE report is refreshingly clear and states that "much has to be done to improve safety at Dounreay to bring it up to the standards HSE requires for continued operation of a nuclear installation and to enable Dounreay to be safely decommissioned and made safe for future generations". Operations in the fuel cycle area are currently shut down and will need HSE approval to restart. A Must if you want to know how many things can go wrong on a single nuclear site. 150 pages, order from HSE Books - PO Box 1999 - Sudbury - Suffolk CO10 6FS Tel: +44 1787 881165 - Fax: +44 1787 313995 The Dounreay Safety Audit is also on the web: http://www.open.gov.uk/hse/nsd/dounreay.pdf

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