Sellafield nuclear site told to improve electrical safety

An employee suffered burns while working on high voltage electrical equipment

Sellafield has been served with an improvement notice by the nuclear industry regulator following a number of electrical safety incidents.

In December, the company was fined £320,000 after a worker sustained a high voltage electrical shock.

In the wake of this and a number of other "electrical events" at the site in Cumbria, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) issued the notice.

Sellafield Ltd said it had already begun implementing changes.

During the accident in April a worker suffered 15-20% burns to his arm and chest, in what was described in magistrates court as " an entirely avoidable event that occurred due to inadequate training and a lack of supervision".

'Safety programme'

Dr Mina Golshan, ONR deputy chief inspector, said: "The improvement notice will require it to make improvements to the training and supervision of staff carrying out electrical work... we have identified these issues to be the root causes of the majority of recent events.

"The notice will also require that any lessons learned from these incidents are applied to all areas of the site where electrical work is carried out."

Sellafield Ltd said in a statement: "We acknowledge that aspects of our management of electrical work have fallen below the standards we would expect.

"We take this extremely seriously and we have already begun implementing lessons learned from these events.

"This includes a detailed electrical improvements programme and an electrical safety integration programme."