Five men arrested under British terror laws near biggest nuclear site in Europe

British police said Tuesday that they arrested five men under anti-terrorism laws near a nuclear power plant in northwest England.

Police officers stopped the men in a vehicle near the Sellafield nuclear site, in Cumbria, northwest England, at around 4:30 pm (1530 GMT) on Monday, police said in a statement.

Cumbria Constabulary said all the men were from London and in their 20s. They were being held Tuesday at a police station in Manchester.

Police held the men under section 41 of the Terrorism Act, which allows offices to arrest people suspected of terrorist offences and hold them for 48 hours without charge.

Britain is on high alert after US Special Forces killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a raid in Pakistan late Sunday, sparking fears of revenge attacks.

There was no immediate suggestion that the arrests were linked to any specific plot.

Sellafield is the biggest nuclear site in Europe and most of the plutonium in Britain is stored there.

It opened in 1947 and Calder Hall, the first nuclear power station to produce electricity in commercial quantities, opened at the site in 1956.

Calder Hall closed in 2003, and work at Sellafield now focuses on dismantling old nuclear reactors and reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.

(Sara Ghasemilee of Al Arabiya