An incident at the SCK•CEN nuclear research centre in Mol, northeast Belgium, that saw two out of three measuring channels not working according to regulations and the third not working because it was defective, has been classified by Belgium’s nuclear regulator as a level-2 event on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Nuclear and Radiological Events Scale (INES).

The Federal Agency for Nuclear Control (Fanc) said it had classified the event as level 2 – an “incident” – on the scale, which goes up to a maximum of 7, because operating conditions were not respected and because a similar event occurred at SCK•CEN in 2019. “These two incidents are linked to safety culture”, Fanc said.