Kritiek op veiligheid van nucleaire EU-onderzoeksfaciliteit in Karlsruhe (en)

The European Commission has this week formally replied to allegations by a whistleblower about serious safety breaches in one of its nuclear research institutes.

The allegations about the 220-person Institute for Transuranium (ITU) in Karlsruhe, Germany were made originally in 2002 when an employee alleged there had been "illegal transport and export of radioactive materials".

The trained chemist asked the Commission to open an inquiry into instances of maladministration due to "a completely inadequate management and control system and deficiencies as regards the training of staff".

One specific allegation was that uranium oxide had been sent as normal freight by courier to the US from within the ITU whose mission, according to its website, "is to protect the European citizen against risks associated with the handling and storage of highly radioactive elements."

The Commission forwarded the complaints to the EU anti-fraud office (OLAF), which then informed the Environment ministry of Baden-Württemburg and the German authorities investigated the matter.

According to a report in weekly German magazine Stern, the employee, Christine Sauer, giving evidence to the environment ministry in Baden-Würrtemberg at the time, said she was put to work in the unit dealing with transport of radioactive materials "without any training" in this area.

After carrying out an inspection in March 2003, the Karlsruhe industrial inspectorate concluded that in three out of four cases either the employees did not have the required certificate or did not possess complete training.

Complaint

After writing serveral times internally to the Commission, Ms Sauer took her complaint to the EU ombudsman Nikiforos Diamandouros i feeling that she had not received an adequate response from within the institution.

She is alleging that the Commission failed to handle the original request for access to documents in time and exhaustively, and that the Commission is in breach of the German Nuclear Power Act.

For its part, the Commission argued that since the German authorities looked into the case it was not obliged to take it further.

But this was refuted by Mr Diamandouros in a draft recommendation at the end of last year in which he concluded that "the Commission had failed to carry out an examination of the allegations that was as proper and as thorough as could be expected in the light of their seriousness".

It also noted that the Baden-Würrtemberg environment ministry had found the allegations to be "credible on the whole".

Next steps

Ms Sauer has until mid-May to submit observation on what the Commission has said - the Commission's reply will be in the public domain next week.

After that, the Ombudman can either decide to close the case or use the ultimate weapon in his power - send a special report to the European Parliament.

To date, however, only nine such reports have ever been sent to the Brussels assembly.