British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) has been ordered to stop using certain rail wagons for the transportation of low-level waste from Sellafield to a storage centre. The order follows the derailment of a wagon on August 1st.
A prohibition order was issued by the British Railways Inspectorate and served by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), preventing the use of the type of rail wagon involved in the accident .
BNFL has until August 25th to appeal against the notice. However, a spokeswoman for the company said yesterday that BNFL would be complying with the order and expected that repairs and improvements to the wagons would take two to three days to complete.
In a statement, the HSE said that BNFL would have to apply to the inspectorate before it next operated the wagons. The inspectorate would want evidence that the necessary work had been completed.
The action was taken following the low-speed derailment of a rail wagon carrying low-level waste at 8.27 a.m. on August 1st. The wagon was derailed on a set of points after the train left the sidings at Sellafield.
The HSE statement said there was no damage to, or leak from, the nuclear flask the wagon was carrying. Neither the locomotive nor the train's other three wagons were affected.
The wagons involved are used on the line between Sellafield and Drigg on an infrastructure owned by Railtrack plc.
The BNFL spokeswoman said that Drigg was a storage site three or four miles from Sellafield. Low-level waste would include such items as paper shoes, disposable trousers, overalls, anything used in what was described as an active area.
She said the problem appeared to have been with the wheels of one wagon. The prohibition notice concerned only the three wagons used to transport low-level waste to Drigg and did not relate to the transport of nuclear materials, she said.
The four-vehicle train was travelling at 5 m.p.h. Four of one wagon's eight wheels came off the track, causing a partial derailment.
The railway inspectorate's notice banned the "KVA" type of wagon from operating on any section of public railway. Inspectors said the "vehicle suspension of the trains does not comply with safety standards and there is the possibility of derailment and subsequent collision with other rail vehicles which operate between Drigg and Sellafield".