May 31st, 1995: Four Dundalk residents are given permission by the High Court to sue British Nuclear Fuels Ltd in an effort to stop the company operating its Sellafield THORP plant.

July 24th, 1995: BNFL is fined £15,000 for five breaches of safety rules during transport of radioactive fuel at Sellafield.

September 14th, 1995: Nuclear Electric plc is fined £250,000 for breaches of safety rules at the Wylfa power plant in north Wales - including taking nine hours to shut down following an accident. The court heard a tape recording in which control room staff laughed and giggled as the incident developed. Eight years before, a British nuclear consultant had warned that a major accident at Wylfa could result in levels of radioactive iodine 131 in south eastern Ireland up to 100 times higher than the Soviet Union's emergency level at the time of Chernobyl.

September 18th, 1995: Nuclear Electric plc confirms that it shut down a second Magnox reactor two weeks ago, after discovering that part of the refuelling machinery had been damaged.

October 10th, 1995: Reports that more than 2,000 tonnes of nuclear waste were dumped off the Irish and Scottish coasts by Britain in 1981 are to be investigated by the European Commission.

December 3rd, 1995: The Irish Government is to be among those seeking to stop a British company from building a nuclear waste dump under the plutonium factory at Sellafield.

January 24th 1996: BNFL appeals last May's High Court ruling to the Supreme Court.

February 9th, 1996: BNFL evacuates 53 workers from a section of the Sellafield plant after an abnormal degree of radioactivity is recorded.

March 19th, 1996: The Guardian reports that a full scale safety investigation has been launched into possible design faults at two British nuclear power stations after an incident at Heysham 2 on January 29th. Details of the accident - when a seven tonne fuel rod became stuck in the reactor core during refuelling - had been kept secret.