National
Director and Head of Production at the Ascó nuclear plant are sacked
By h.b.
Apr 16, 2008 - 5:06 PM

The director of the Ascó nuclear plant in the village of the same name near Barcelona has been sacked after downplaying the extent of a radioactive leak last November 28.

Rafael Gasca and the Head of Production at the plant, González Tardiu are both leaving after the discovery that they had said the leak was ‘of scant significance’ and classified as level one in the international scale of nuclear incidents.

Greenpeace has been among the many groups who have since called for the incident to be reclassified, fearing that in fact the incident was ‘the most serious’ in the history of nuclear power in Spain. They claimed to have detected far higher levels of radioactivity. Other ecologist groups and the CCOO union have also complained of cost cutting at the plant.

The CSN the Nuclear Safety Council in Spain has been testing all the people who have passed through the plant since November 28 last year, and say that all those tested, including schoolchildren who visited the plant on April4, are normal. There is no evidence that despite the admitted higher levels of radioactivity released, that anyone was subjected to a dose above that of established legal limits.