A FISHERMAN spoke of his anger at Sizewell A bosses last night after they failed to inform him of a radioactive water leak.Reg Ball was one of 15 people fishing from the beach near to the decommissioned nuclear power station when the alarm was raised on Sunday.

A FISHERMAN spoke of his anger at Sizewell A bosses last night after they failed to inform him of a radioactive water leak.

Reg Ball was one of 15 people fishing from the beach near to the decommissioned nuclear power station when the alarm was raised on Sunday.

But the 60-year-old, from Ipswich, only became aware of the incident when reading yesterday's EADT.

Last night, Sizewell A denied members of the public were subjected to any risk by the leak and said lessons would be learned by the incident.

But Mr Ball said had he and his fellow fisherman been informed of the incident at the time, they would have left the area immediately.

“I find the whole thing quite disturbing,” he said.

“We arrived just before 9am on Sunday and just before lunch time a siren started to go off and then we heard a Tannoy.

“We thought if there was something wrong, they would tell us. But it was only after reading the newspaper yesterday we realised something had happened - and it was only about 75 yards away from where we were fishing.

“If they had told us they were investigating a possible leak we would have been out of there. At least we could have made a decision.

“I felt quite disgusted when I found out. I would rather they said if they had a problem.”

Mr Ball has since contacted the power station bosses, who have said there is no need for him to checked out by a medical expert.

A spokesman for Sizewell A said no radioactive material had leaked into the sea or surrounding waterways from the cracked pipe, which runs from the site's cooling ponds to the effluent treatment plant.

He said: “The events which led up to this incident will be investigated and any lessons we can learn will be shared across all our sites.

“We can reassure people that there will be no harm to them or the environment. The amount of material released was less than 1% of the site's annual discharge limit.”

He said a range of safety checks and maintenance procedures are in place to prevent radioactive material being released.

The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate has launched an inquiry into the leak, which happened a week after the power station stopped generating electricity for the National Grid.

An estimated 40,000 gallons of radioactive water, used to cool nuclear fuel before it is sent to Sellafield for reprocessing, escaped from the broken pipe.