9 November 2000

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BNFL fine for massive bleach leak into Irish Sea is "pitiful"

Sinn Fein Louth County Councillor Arthur Morgan has described as "pitifully inadequate" the £15,000 [fifteen thousand pounds] fine against British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) for a massive bleach discharge into the Irish Sea .

BNFL was fined £15,000 by a Welsh court on Wednesday after it admitted that its nuclear power station at Wylfa, in Wales, pumped into the Irish Sea 5,000 [five thousand] gallons of bleach - 20,000 [twenty thousand] times more concentrated than legally allowed.

Councillor Morgan, a long-standing anti-nuclear campaigner, said that this will obviously have a serious impact on the environment.

"A £15,000 fine against the multi-million-pound nuclear industry is like waving your finger at a reckless car driver.

"This is another example of woeful negligence by BNFL management to add to the catalogue of disasters at its nuclear plants.  If stronger action is not taken now then how long will before BNFL ignores safety needs entirely and there is a major disaster?"

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