Minister for the Environment Dick Roche has accused British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) of incompetence, and said the company's handling of a recent crisis "speaks of Homer Simpson".
Mr Roche has formally written to the British government and to the European Commission expressing his lack of confidence in the management of the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria.
His comments follow the disclosure by BNFL that a pipe in the thermal oxide reprocessing plant (Thorp) at Sellafield may have begun to fail as early as August 2004, and that opportunities were missed between January 2005 and April 19th which would have shown material was leaking.
Mr Roche has called on the British government to "work towards the closure of the plant".
Homer Simpson is the safety inspector at Springfield's nuclear power station in the cartoon series The Simpsons.
In the series the power plant frequently leaks radiation, and is responsible for the creation of three-eyed fish in the nearby river
Mr Roche's comments arose after BNFL informed him that a cracked pipe had leaked at Sellafield in an incident on April 18th.
Three days later Mr Roche announced the incident by press release, expressing his confidence in BNFL's ability to handle the issue.
He also expressed his satisfaction that BNFL had delivered on its obligations to give the Republic early warning of such incidents.
Mr Roche later discovered that the incident was categorised as Level 3, not the less serious Level 1, as he had been told.
Yesterday he said he had now learned that the crack in the pipe had actually occurred some time last summer and had been detected by BNFL last January.
"It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you put a dangerous fluid in one end of a pipe and it doesn't come out the other end, then there is a leak.
"But BNFL failed to notice this for about six months. This is further evidence of BNFL's poor safety record, about which successive Irish governments have complained."
He said the incident displayed poor-quality management, and called for the British authorities to work towards the closure of Sellafield.
"The reality of the situation is that they are just not doing the job they are supposed to do," he said.
Mr Roche added that the European Commission should step up inspections at nuclear plants and not reduce them as they were currently planning to.
