- A NUCLEAR power station had to declare
a full-scale emergency after hurricane winds knocked out the power to cool
its reactors.
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- The alert sparked fears of a Chernobyl-style
meltdown. One worker said: "The sirens were sounding all over the
plant and there were police, fire and ambulance crews arriving. We didn't
know what was going on.
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- "It is the most serious incident
I have ever seen. They had to take an emergency roll-call of all staff
using clipboards and bits of paper because the computers controlling the
electronic swipe card system failed."
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- Hunterston B in Ayrshire was still out
of action last night over 48 hours after panicking bosses sounded the alarm.
They declared an emergency when they could not restart back-up generators
to stop the nuclear reactors' two cores overheating.
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- Frightened staff were called from their
homes and battled for five hours to manually reset the safety systems before
the cores went "critical".
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- The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate
has launched a full-scale inquiry into what it calls "a serious incident".
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- A spokeswoman said: "Two inspectors
were called in as soon as the alarm was raised. There was no power to the
system that cools the reactor for a number of hours."
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- The problem began after storms took out
the National Grid twice in 12 hours. The first time, at 11pm on Saturday,
the emergency generators switched on automatically.
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- But there were not enough staff on duty
to reset them before the grid went down for a second time at 11am on Sunday.
The emergency is a major embarrassment for the nuclear industry.
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- Friends of the Earth spokesman Kevin
Dunion said people would be "astounded" that failsafe procedures
were not in place for holiday periods.
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- He said: "This is extremely serious.
We are told they are eternally vigilant 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
A full inquiry into the role of the management must be carried out."
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- And Roseanna Cunnigham, the Scottish
National Party's environment spokeswoman, said it was "unbelievable"
that the plant could not handle two power cuts because of Christmas holidays.
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- She said. "You cannot afford to
take risks with nuclear energy. Surely we know that by now?
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- "Questions must be answered on why
Hunterston B was understaffed."
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- The alert has similarities to an incident
at Dounreay earlier this year when a digger severed power cables - and
the back-up failed to work.
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- That was one of the reasons Scottish
Secretary Donald Dewar ordered the plant to be permanently closed.
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- Hunterston generates electricity for
the National Grid. When the grid goes down there is nowhere for the Hunterston
electricity to go and the reactors automatically shut off.
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- The back-up generators - diesel and battery
powered - should then switch on to cool the reactors. Without them the
plant would be dangerously damaged in 20 hours and meltdown within a week.
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- Scottish Nuclear confirmed that it had
declared an emergency at the site.
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- A spokeswoman said: "It was the
quickest way to get key staff to the plant.
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- "After such incidents there is an
investigation to see if anything could have been done differently."
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- POISON LEGACY OF CHERNOBYL
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- THE world's worst nuclear disaster was
at Chernobyl in 1986.
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- An explosion at the Ukraine power plant
released 200 times more radiation than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom
bombs.
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- Thousands of people developed leukaemia,
tumours and diabetes. Birth defects rose by 161 per cent in 10 years.
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- Communist party chiefs tried to hush
up the horror and told evacuated locals they would be home in three or
four days.
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- But the town's bakery, sports hall, post
office, hotels and restaurants are still closed.
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- A 30 kilometre contamination zone remains
in place.
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- The impact of the explosion spread across
Europe with farmers in Wales and Scotland reporting contaminated sheep.
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