shut sellafield

A work by Brent Parker will be performed in a concert in aid of the Chernobyl Children’s Project.

Credo, with words and music by Brent Parker, is the voice of the Liquidators. This was the name given to those who were ordered into Chernobyl to cap and contain the damage caused by the nuclear explosion in1986. The Liquidators must transcend all thoughts of themselves, despite mortal personal danger, to prevent further calamity for the entire population.

Credo is a short work for a large choral force with organ and brass instruments. The premiere takes place on 29 April 2006 in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, with St Patrick’s Choir and the Resurgam choir, and brass players provided by Fergus O’Carroll. It will be conducted by Peter Barley, director of music at St Patrick’s Cathedral.

The concert, presented by Chernobyl Children’s Project for the benefit of the charity, is part of their twentieth anniversary remembrances of the Chernobyl disaster. more

Speaking in the Dáil on the 20th anniversary of Chernobyl, Taoiseach (irish prime minister) Bertie Ahern said “As a non-nuclear state, Ireland has played a very strong role by preventing the development of nuclear weapons and forcing the eventual closure of Sellafield.

“Sellafield poses an unacceptable threat to this country on the grounds of ongoing pollution, its poor safety record and the impact of a major terrorist act,� he added.

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workers for Capita have seen delays in wages for a second week. last week it was reported that Easter week wages were missed for hundreds on the 1500 Nuke Plant workers. Now it has been repeated.

[Telegraph.co.uk] Parts of Cumbria are still affected by the radioactive fallout from the fire at the Windscale half a century ago, experts said yesterday.

The 1957 accident at Windscale pile one, a military reactor on the Sellafield site used to make plutonium for bombs, released a radioactive cloud that spread contamination over England and Wales, with hotspots on the western coast of Cumbria.

It is still the West’s worst nuclear accident. The fallout could be detected in mainland Europe and, even though it was small in comparison with that ejected by the Chernobyl explosion 20 years ago, it was a much greater threat to life than the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in the United States.

One isotope, caesium-137, from the Windscale fire can still be detected in a few areas of Cumbria, along with that from Chernobyl and nuclear weapons testing carried out in the 1960s, said Dr Jim Smith of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Dorchester. (more…)

Greenpeace: Chernobyl, Ukraine — A new Greenpeace report has revealed that the full consequences of the Chernobyl disaster could top a quarter of a million cancers cases and nearly 100,000 fatal cancers.

Our report involved 52 respected scientists and includes information never before published in English. It challenges the UN International Atomic Energy Agency Chernobyl Forum report, which predicted 4,000 additional deaths attributable to the accident as a gross simplification of the real breadth of human suffering.

The new data, based on Belarus national cancer statistics, predicts approximately 270,000 cancers and 93,000 fatal cancer cases caused by Chernobyl. The report also concludes that on the basis of demographic data, during the last 15 years, 60,000 people have additionally died in Russia because of the Chernobyl accident, and estimates of the total death toll for the Ukraine and Belarus could reach another 140,000.

20 years ago today: a collection of stories as they appear in today’s press, this post will be updated through the day.
Chernobyl in Pictures [BBC]
20 years on, no end in sight to the suffering [Guardian]
Briefing: Chernobyl disaster [FT]
A Look Back at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant Disaster 20 Years Later [VOA]
A disaster we must not repeat [the age]

Irish Examiner: FIREFIGHTERS are ill-equipped and insufficiently trained to deal with a major nuclear disaster, the National Firefighters Committee said yesterday.

Chair of the committee Brian Murray was commenting on Ireland’s emergency planning after the screening by RTÉ of Fallout, a docudrama about a nuclear disaster at Sellafield.

“There have been no exercises carried out in the middle of a major urban centre in this country to see exactly how the fire services could deal with such an accident,� he stressed.

And while Britain has 80 instant response units capable of dealing with mass contamination, Ireland has none.

Mr Murray said attempts were being made to have a decontamination system available round the clock in Dublin but it had yet to be put in place. more

Greenpeace: A terrorist attack on a train carrying waste nuclear materials across Britain could spread lethal radioactivity across an area of 100 sq kilometres, and result in the deaths of up to 8000 people.

Spent nuclear fuel is routinely transported by train from nine nuclear power stations around the country for reprocessing or storage at Sellafield in Cumbria. Typically these journeys take place once a week from each reactor – at the same time and on the same lines as regular passenger and freight trains. more

greenpeace video

Jan 2006 A video showing terrorists crashing a passenger plane into a nuclear power station. click here

Fiction? post 9/11 this 10/29/2001 report by wise-paris explains a lot.

Whitehaven News reports: THE first moves have been made to clean-up the ponds used to store Britain’s first-ever plutonium fuel rods from the crash programme to create the UK’s A Bomb.

The ponds at Sellafield were used to hold nuclear fuel rods when they came out of the Windscale plutonium piles just after the end of the Second World War.

British Nuclear Group last week announced the first step towards decommissioning the original fuel storage pond for the Windscale Reactor at Sellafield, which dates from 1948.

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Looking ahead, Glenn McCracken, head of delivery for Pile Fuel Storage Pond, said: “This year promises to be an even more challenging year for the team as completion of several major activities are required to prepare for pond desludging including the installation and commissioning of a local effluent treatment plant.

“This is a key enabler to project progress and will provide treatment prior to effluents being discharged to the low active drain and effluent treatment plant before subsequent discharges to sea.� more