Energy giant EDF is due to be prosecuted over a worker injury at the Hinkley nuclear power plant.
A worker for the engineer Doosan Babcock Ltd fell ‘from height’ at the plant in 2017, and was hurt.
The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), the UK’s independent nuclear safety regulator, has expressed intent to prosecute both EDF Energy Nuclear Generation Ltd and Doosan Babcock Ltd.
It said that “The charges relate to an incident on 12 April 2017 at Hinkley Point B which resulted in injury to a Doosan Babcock Ltd employee.
“The incident was a conventional health and safety matter and there was no radiological risk to workers or the public.”
Both companies were initially handed improvement notices from the ONR in April.
Doosan Babcock said it had co-operated fully with the investigation.
A spokesperson for EDF said: “We are reviewing the charges against us and considering our response.
“As we would in any industrial safety incident of this nature we have and will continue to cooperate fully with the ONR”.
The ONR added that the proceedings are currently scheduled to commence at Bath Magistrates Court on 12 September 2018.
Hinkley B Power Station, in Somerset, is due to be decommissioned in 2023.
It is next to a new plant which is currently under construction, known as Hinkley Point C.
This site was also in recent news as 600 workers on the site staged a mass sit-in during the January snow. The unofficial dispute resulted in talks between the Unite trade union and EDF.
Hinkley Point C site cost in the region of £20bn, and EDF Energy has claimed that it could build a proposed new plant in Sizewell, Suffolk, for a capital cost reduction of 20%.
EDF Energy and its partner China General Nuclear Ltd hope to build a new nuclear power station, Sizewell C, located to the north of the existing Sizewell B plant.
It said it will create 25,000 “employment opportunities”.
