United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority

This article is part of the Nuclear Spin project of Spinwatch.

Background

United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) was established in 1954 by the UK Government to oversee the country's nuclear research programme and development of the industry. In 1956 Calder Hall was commissioned by the UKAEA turning UK into "the first country in the world to adopt nuclear power on an industrial and commercial scale". In 1957 after a fire at Windscale, a nuclear complex near Calder Hall, which reportedly caused "32 deaths and 260 cases of cancer" from the leaked radiation, UKAEA changed its name to Sellafield. In 1971 BNFL, the authority's production arm, split off from the UKAEA.

UKAEA currently oversees five of the UK's 20 nuclear sites. Since April 2005, it has worked under contract to the government's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority to decommission old nuclear plants. According to The Guardian, it has undertaken a £8bn project to dismantle 26 research reactors and bury nuclear waste.

Doubts at Dounreay

A cover-up

In 2005, a cementation plant at Dounreay, a UKAEA facility, was closed after the spillage of hazardous, dissolved spent fuel and an investigation started. According to the Times, "the discovery of nuclear particles on neighbouring beaches has led to calls for a full public inquiry into the scale of pollution at the site, while the UKAEA has been accused of a cover-up". The prototype fast reactor at Dounreay was already shut down in 1994.

This was the second scare in less than a year to hit the plant. According to the Daily Mail, a Dounreay spokesman "confirmed that eight workers were being tested for suspected plutonium intake". The lab was already shut down the previous year "following a similar alarm involving 15 workers...In August, UKAEA started refresher courses following a number of radiation scares, during which contamination was detected on five workers in a week."

A PR stunt

In February 2006, The Times also reported how Geoffrey Minter, the owner of the Sandside estate near the Dounreay plant had banned UKAEA scientists from his land, saying that he no longer believed the UKAEA was serious about cleaning up radioactive material from the beach. Minter said he had withdrawn consent to the use of his land because the sampling exercise had degenerated into "a public relations stunt" intended "merely to give people the impression that the UKAEA was tackling the underlying hazard".

UKAEA takes its radioactive leaks on tour

In February 2006, the Authority was fined £250,000 for allowing a containment flask which contained decommissioned cancer treatment equipment to be driven 130 miles across northern England with a vital protective plug missing. Leeds Crown Court heard it was "pure good fortune" that no-one was exposed to the beam of gamma radiation, due to the fact that it happened to be pointing downwards. Counsel for the HSE told the court that the radiation dose rates measured when the lorry arrived at Windscale "were in the order of 100 to 1,000 times above what would normally be considered a very high dose rate and measurement was beyond the capabilities of normal hand-held monitoring equipment."

Spin doctors

UKAEA has previously commissioned the services of the following PR companies:

• Grayling Political Strategy
• APCO Worldwide
• Fells Associates

In 2006, NuclearSpin applied for details of UKAEA's lobbying and public relations activities, under the Freedom of Information Act. But UKAEA refused to reveal the information, stating that its release 'would prejudice the commercial interests of the consultants'. NuclearSpin appealed.

Key Personnel

Chief Executive	Dipesh Shah
Chairman	Barbara Thomas Judge
Director, Major Projects & Engineering	Colin Bayliss
Director, Safety & Assurance	John Crofts
Chief Financial Officer	Andrew Jackson

John Collier was a former Chairman of UKAEA.

Website

www.ukaea.org.uk