First, there were the pigeons: hundreds that spent part of their day feeding in the garden of a rural English cottage, and part of their day brooding atop radiation-contaminated buildings at British Nuclear Fuel Ltd.'s Sellafield complex a few miles away.
The garden was found to be so contaminated that workers in protective suits had to come in, wring the necks of 700 radioactive pigeons and dispose of them as low-level nuclear waste. Two official review committees in June accused BNFL of mismanagement in allowing the spread of nuclear contaminants to residential areas nearby.
Then, last month, the British government's nuclear oversight agency found that BNFL workers had deliberately falsified quality control data on nuclear fuel shipped to overseas markets, a breach the agency said reflected BNFL's inadequate "safety culture." Germany, Japan and Switzerland announced they would no longer accept BNFL fuels.
Much of this would be distant, if sobering, news if BNFL were not the company the U.S. government is relying on most heavily to clean up America's nuclear weapons mess. The company holds nearly $9 billion in U.S. contracts for some of the most technologically challenging environmental cleanup tasks in the nation--contracts that public interest groups are now demanding be canceled because of the revelations.
"Here in the United States, they're going to be handling the most dangerous materials known to man. And the fact is, the problems they have in England come down to a lack of a safety culture and a lack of integrity on the part of their operators," said Tom Carpenter of the Government Accountability Project, one of 22 public interest and anti-nuclear groups that are filing a petition today with the Department of Energy to bar BNFL from U.S. nuclear cleanup contracts.
Richardson Orders Review of Operations
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson on Wednesday ordered a "top-to-bottom review" of BNFL's operations at five DOE sites that will look at the company's management and safety record in the U.S. and Britain.
"In light of recent events overseas, we are putting BNFL under extra scrutiny . . . to be sure that the problems uncovered at Sellafield don't exist at DOE sites," a department statement said.
The company, whose chief executive resigned in the wake of the revelations, said it has overhauled its British operations to prevent future errors but said the fuel delivered was never unsafe.
