LONDON, Oct. 21 (Xinhua) -- An army bomb disposal team were Saturday disposing of a quantity of chemicals found at Sellafield, Britain's main nuclear reprocessing site.
Parts of the site in Cumbria, in northern England, were evacuated, but the government body operating Sellafield, said Saturday no radioactive materials were involved in the alert.
Chemicals involved in the incident are solvents, such as Tetrahydrofuran, which are potentially flammable in liquid states and can crystallise and become unstable when exposed to air (oxygen), said a spokesman at the site Saturday.
In a statement, Sellafield Ltd, the government agency operating the site, said: "An area of the site is cordoned off as a precaution, but the rest of the site is operational and the majority of our staff who would be in at the weekend are at work and working normally."
A spokesperson for Sellafield Ltd said: "Following a chemical inventory audit in a laboratory, we took the decision to dispose of a number of chemicals which are no longer used in our operations and have been stored since 1992.
"In line with established procedures, we alerted the relevant partner agencies and sought advice on managing this material in accordance with the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health regulations.
"This is not a radiological event. The chemical is contained within a small number of canisters. These need to be removed and disposed of appropriately. The materials involved are solvents which are widely used in industry, and they will be disposed of in a controlled manner."
The spokesperson said an army explosive ordnance disposal team were called in to deal with the incident and will dispose of the material safely.
"They will dig a trench, bury the canisters using sandbags, and detonate them in a controlled manner. This will create a noise that will be audible off-site, but there is no need for alarm," said the spokesperson.
The statement added that these chemicals concerned are used extensively in many industries and are well understood, but because this is happening on the Sellafield site extreme caution was being exercised.
Sellafield reprocesses and stores most of Britain's nuclear waste.
