Last updated 15:52, Wednesday, 02 April 2008

A CORRIDOR in the Sellafield nuclear waste sea disposal facility became contaminated after a leak.

On Wednesday, March 19, liquid deriving from Sellafield's sea discharge plant overflowed from holding tanks into a concrete room designed to contain and deal with overflow incidents.

A small amount of liquid was also discovered in an adjacent concrete corridor.

All material was recovered and radiation monitoring confirmed that the liquid was of such low radioactivity that no further work was required to decontaminate the area.

An investigation is underway to understand more about how the incident happened and any findings will be shared with our safety regulator, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, and the Environment Agency.

The incident has been classified as Below Scale on the International Nuclear Event Scale.