Sepa said it had submitted reports to prosecutors in February this year and November 2004
Sepa said it had submitted reports to prosecutors in February this year and November 2004.. The summer drought has generated more than 100 reports of serious effects on wildlife ranging from distressed fish and dead ducks to toxic algal blooms. Water courses in England and Wales are running dry, rivers are silting up and trees are shedding their leaves far earlier than normal because of the dry weather. As rivers dry up, low levels of water and oxygen have caused fish to gasp for air, turned ponds green and stranded several types of aquatic insects, according to the Environment Agency (EA).After two dry winters and a hot, dry summer, the environmental impacts of possibly the worst drought in 100 years are beginning to be seen across the country, said David King, the EA's director of water management."This drought is not only affecting people in the way we use water; we've seen 21 months of below-average rain and the environment is suffering too," he said. More than 1,000 radioactive particles, fragments of spent uranium fuel rods about the size of a grain of sand, have been found on beaches and the sea bed around the facility. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) said it had submitted reports to prosecutors about the facility. Sepa is now waiting to see if legal proceedings will be brought against the UKAEA. Dounreay, a former experimental reactor establishment, was shut in 1994 and is earmarked for a £2.9 billion decommissioning by 2033.
She added: "It shouldn't have happened, but the plant was designed to protect the workforce and the environment in case something like this did happen. "There was no danger to any of our employees and the necessary steps were taken." In a separate development, the operators of Dounreay could face legal action over the release of radioactive particles. The penalty is thought to be the biggest suffered after a safety breach at Dounreay. The radioactive leak at Sellafield's Thorp reprocessing plant in May 2005 involved enough toxic material to half fill an Olympic-size swimming pool.
No one was injured after the plutonium and uranium fuel dissolved in concentrated nitric acid seeped through a fractured pipe but the plant had to be shut for several months. The fines are detailed in the NDA's annual review for 2005/06. Its report says: "As a consequence of failings that led to incidents at Thorp and Dounreay, the NDA has made a fee deduction of £2 million from both BNG Sellafield Ltd and UKAEA respectively." A spokesman for the UKAEA said the Dounreay accident was unfortunate but no employees had been harmed. The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority was penalised over an incident at Dounreay in Caithness.