Europe News
Report criticizes safety procedures at Swedish nuclear plant
By DPA
Jan 29, 2007, 17:10 GMT

Stockholm - The owners of a Swedish nuclear power plant Monday welcomed further investigation of safety regulations at the site after a critical internal report alleging deficiencies was published.

Employees at the Forsmark nuclear power plant criticized 'security routines' at the plant according to the report commissioned after a shut-down last summer.

The report mentioned some two dozen accidents at the plant including falls and dropped equipment, and random tests for alcohol that resulted in three of 25 people tested being ordered to leave the site. These findings signalled 'a deterioration in security thinking,' the internal report said.

'The three were employed by contractors, but we have zero tolerance,' spokesman Erik von Hofsten of Vattenfall Nordic, the division of the state-owned energy giant Vattenfall that operates Forsmark, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Von Hofsten said the group 'welcomed' the probe into its security adding that it 'understood' that the reports could trigger concern.

'We have launched a 60-point programme of which 20 points are in place, while 30 are underway,' he added.

The measures were ordered after one of the reactors at Forsmark shut down late July 2006 after a short-circuit in a switchyard outside the plant. The reactor shut down, but two of four emergency generators failed to start. Several other systems partly malfunctioned, sparking a debate over nuclear safety.

The Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate (SKI) has continued to keep a close watch over Forsmark, spokesman Anders Bredfell of SKI said.

Bredfell said the nuclear watchdog SKI was familiar with the findings in the internal report but did not deem it necessary to step up its supervisory measures at present.

However, on Monday the agency filed a police complaint against Forsmark over the failure 'to conduct a cold shutdown of the reactor' until the day after the July incident.

A 'cold shutdown' means the procedure to restart the reactor takes longer time and entails different procedures, Bredfell said.

Sweden operated 12 nuclear rectors at most. Two at the Barseback plant in southern Sweden have been decommissioned, the most recent in May 2005.