Press Release: E002:97 6 January 1997 Statement of nuclear incidents at nuclear installations A statement of nuclear incidents at nuclear installations in Britain during the third quarter of 1996 is published today by the Health and Safety Executive (copy attached). It covers the period 1 July to 30 September 1996. The statement is published under arrangements that came into effect from the first quarter of 1993, derived from the Health and Safety Commission's powers under Section 11 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. Statement of Nuclear Incidents at Nuclear Installations: Third Quarter 1996 single copies free from the Information Centre,Health and Safety Executive, Ground Floor North Wing, Rose Court, 2 Southwark Bridge, London SE1 9HS. Notes to Editors 1.The arrangements for reporting incidents were announced to Parliament by the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Energy on 30 April 1987 (Hansard cols 203-204). A minor modification to arrangements for reporting nuclear incidents was announced in HSE press notice E108:93 of 30 June 1993. 2.Normally each incident mentioned in HSE's Quarterly Incident Statements will already have been made public by the licensee or site operator either through a press statement or by inclusion in the newsletter for the site concerned. 3.The location of the installations mentioned in the statement are as follows:- Dounreay - United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority Statement of nuclear incidents at nuclear installations third quarter 1996 The Health and Safety Executive presents the attached statement of nuclear incidents at nuclear installations published under the Health and Safety Commission's powers derived from Section 11 of the Health and Safety at Work, etc Act 1974. Incident 96/3/1 Dounreay - United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) An employee working at UKAEA Dounreay in the oxide reprocessing plant has been discovered by biological monitoring to have received a high internal dose from plutonium during 1995. The overdose could not be linked to a known incident on the plant and investigations by the UKAEA and the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate are continuing. The UKAEA currently believe that the dose is above 200 mSv (milliSieverts). The relevant annual dose limit is 50mSv. Incident 96/3/2 Dounreay - United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) An employee working at UKAEA Dounreay in the waste handling facilities has been discovered by biological monitoring to have received a high internal dose from plutonium during 1995. The overdose could not be linked to a known incident on the plant and investigations by the UKAEA and the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate are continuing. The UKAEA currently believe that the dose is above 200 mSv (milliSieverts). The relevant annual dose limit is 50mSv. (It is not thought that there is any connection between this overdose and the one above, since the employees were working in completely separate parts of the site.) NOTE: internal doses are calculated as the dose equivalent accruing over the period of 50 years following the intake of radioactive material. Once it has been assessed for a particular dosimetric period (such as a year), however, it is attributed to that period for the purpose of compliance with the dose limits. ---