The Sellafield nuclear site secretly stored and tested the hearts, lungs and other organs of some of its former workers over a period of 30 years, The Times has learnt.

From the 1960s to the 1990s, body parts from at least 65 employees who worked at Britain’s biggest nuclear plant were taken to the site after postmortem examinations for radiation and were kept in freezers.

British Nuclear Group (BNG), which now runs Sellafield, claimed yesterday that in 61 cases the removal was done on the authority of a coroner. However, The Times understands that the families of the deceased were never informed and their consent not obtained. In four cases BNG has no record of any mandate at all. The body parts were destroyed by the testing process although some were kept for several months.

Alistair Darling, the Trade and Industry Secretary, will make an emergency statement to the Commons today. He is expected to launch an independent inquiry, the findings of which will be made public. BNG may have to comb through 20,000 medical records of deceased employees to determine the extent of the problem.

In 1977 the UK Atomic Energy Authority, which controlled Sellafield, declared that there was no risk attached to working at the plant. However, the disclosures reveal that it continued secretly to test its employees’ bodies for another 15 years.

The revelation has striking parallels with the Alder Hey hospital scandal, where body parts from more than 850 infants were stored in more than 2,000 containers on the secret orders of doctor. A spokesman for the Department of Trade and Industry, the nuclear industry’s sponsor department, said: “The prime concern is the feelings of the families. There are clearly a large number of matters that need investigating dating back to the 1960s.” BNG is expected to try to contact all the families it can.

Paul Noon, general secretary of Prospect, the union representing nuclear scientists and engineers at Sellafield, formerly known as Windscale, said: “This issue must be treated in an open and transparent way to protect the interests of the affected families, employees across the nuclear industry today, and the wider public interest. Full disclosure must be the first step and of course an undertaking that such practices will never again be pursued.”

BNG said that the practice of taking some organs from deceased employees began in 1962 and stopped in 1992. The controversy has only come to light now because a research group recently asked for permission to reanalyse some data taken from the tests. That request went before a medical committee of BNG, at which it emerged that there was no evidence of family consent.

At the time of the testing the UK Atomic Energy Authority was a full government agency. Although BNG is still state-owned it is operates at arm’s-length from the Government and is being broken up for sale. The management of Sellafield is the jewel in the crown of the privatisation and will go to private business.

The scandal will hit families hard in the close-knit community of Whitehaven, where most workers have traditionally lived since the plant became a big employer in the 1960s.

Taking body organs without permission is illegal after the scandal at Alder Hey in Liverpool. Parents were not told of the removal of their children’s organs, a practice carried out between 1988 and 1995.

The scandal, and a similar episode at Bristol Royal Infirmary, prompted new legislation. By 2005, coroners had lost the right to demand the retention of tissue from a postmortem examination, even if the cause of death was still unclear.

BNG will not comment on the results of the testing, although it is believed that none of the workers died from radiation poisoning and that their body parts were tested for the effects of long-term radiation exposure.

In February 1977 Geoffrey Schofield, the British Nuclear Fuels chief medical officer, announced an inquiry into whether or not the plant was dangerous to work in. The medical records of 20,000 people who had worked there were examined and it was concluded that there was no additional risk.

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