shut sellafield

from the low level radiation campaign site

Government records altered in cover-up

Winds over Windscale 1957:
Changing the name to Sellafield was not the only rewrite

The 1957 reactor fire at Windscale was possibly the most serious nuclear accident to occur outside the Soviet Union. Large amounts of assorted radio-isotopes were released. Where did they go, and who was affected? The fire began at midnight on 9th October and was finally brought under control on the 12th. Radioactivity in the plume from the later part of the event was tracked south east across England and into Europe. But what happened in the early part? Accounts of the wind direction differ. Reports at the time said that it was blowing out to sea ⁽¹⁾. This is supported by a meteorological analysis ⁽²⁾ showing a cold front lying NE to SW across the Irish Sea from Galloway to the Isle of Man and beyond to Dublin. Accompanied by heavy rain it was moving eastwards; light winds were blowing towards it.

But in 1974 Roger Clarke (now the Director of NRPB) disagreed. He says ⁽³⁾ that winds were from the NW throughout, blowing the radiation inland. Thus there could be no significant dose to Ireland or the Isle of Man.

LLRC went to the Meteorological Office Archives in Bracknell to find out the truth. We found that the original reports of wind speed and direction had been tampered with.
Record sheets for 1957 had been removed from the Met. Office’s Windscale station volume and replaced with new sheets of a slightly different colour from the sheets for previous and subsequent years. The pages for 1957 read: NO RECORD — MAST DISMANTLED The mast “reappeared” in November. When we pointed this out to the archivist he had a good laugh.

A good cover-up is hard to do
It had not been possible to cook the books entirely – the archivist showed us the Air Ministry synoptic charts. These show the entire weather picture for the British Isles. Every three hours they used to draw up a new chart (each one is as big as a dining table) based on reports for wind speed, direction, and precipitation from all the dozens of weather stations around the country. A researcher can easily trace the movement of weather events, like the Windscale Front, as they change and move. Rewriting history as recorded by the charts would be a big job – a matter of inventing new charts covering several days and making sure that at the start and end of the invention features like fronts, and areas of high and low pressure were in the right place to merge with reality.

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Next month marks the 50th anniversary of the Windscale fire. But not many want to be reminded of Windscale as a new programme on Nuclear Energy is being sold by Government and the Nuclear industry. Over the next few weeks I will write about what I hear on the subject. If you hear of something, let me know, info at shutsellafield.com

an interesting read. in PDF format. The Windscale reactor accident—50 years on

a comment on a Jan ’07 post highlights this story on WNN June 15th
“Uranium, plutonium and wastes that would result from used nuclear fuel recycling at Thorp could be sent in advance to international customers.”

in the story it says

The two-year outage (at Thorp ) has led to a backlog of work, which the NDA now hopes to relieve somewhat. Because nuclear materials are fungible – that is, like materials can be exchanged – the NDA has proposed to send equivalent quantities of plutonium, uranium and vitrified waste from UK stockpiles while Thorp is not in operation.

SO the NDA UK Govt and BNG? are sending back to Germany & Japan etc. stockpiled plutonium, uranium and vitrified waste. What do they plan to do with the backlog then? keep it? in Sellafield? forever?

If you ever wanted an excuse to dump on the market what you had too much of – well now you have.

the pipe that burst Thorp

[photo: BNG]

[source] Safety procedures at the Sellafield nuclear plant in North-West England need to be tightened up, Nordic MPs will tell its owners at a meeting next month.
The UK authorities have granted permission to resume reprocessing of nuclear waste at the THORP unit,which was closed several years ago because of a radioactive leak.

“Personally, I don’t think that the unit should ever re-open,” said Asmund Kristoffersen MP from Norway, chair of the Nordic Council Environment and Natural Resources Committee.

The Committee discussed the issue on Wednesday during the the Nordic Council’s April meetings in Copenhagen. The controversial THORP unit has aroused strong feelings among Nordic and Irish politicians. The environment ministers of Norway, Ireland, Iceland and Austria recently demanded that it should not be re-opened, for example.

The organisation Lofoten against Sellafield is organising a conference on THORP in Sellafield, 21-22 May. The Nordic Council Environment Committee, headed by chairperson Kristoffersen, will attend. Other participants include the organisation Bellona, MPs and the owners of the Sellafield plant.

BBC says Tuesday 17/4/2007 Energy summit: Everyone who is anyone in the nuclear industry will gather in Budapest, Hungary, as the World Nuclear Association discusses how best to meet the huge surge in demand for nuclear power

Last week I heard Turlough O’Sullivan of IBEC say we in Ireland should look at nuclear and have the debate. Come back when it is safe and have a debate, the fact that international capitalism can’t plan for tomorrow and here comes peak oil is not good enough reason to choose a technology that is not safe nor has a waste disposal solution even though they had 50 years to sort a solution out, sure when is peak uranium?

IBEC said 10/4/2007 With security of supply and energy costs affected by our 90% dependence on imported fossil fuels, and environmental commitments to carbon abatement, Ireland must evaluate all energy technologies that may be used to meet growing demand. As an alternative technology the potential of nuclear energy in Ireland must be debated in an open, informed and timely manner. [Business priorities for the next government pdf page 9]

A statement on incidents at nuclear installations in Britain that meet Ministerial reporting criteria is reported to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and the Secretary of State for Scotland and is published every quarter by the Health and Safety Executive.

For the period 1 October 2006 to 31 December 2006 there was one incident at Sellafield which met the reporting criteria. This involved a major injury accident ( a broken arm, fractured ulna and crush injuries to the wrist ) to one of British Nuclear Group Sellafield Ltd’s ( BNGSL ) workers whilst maintaining equipment in the Waste Treatment Complex Supercompactor Glovebox Suite on the Sellafield Licensed Site.

For more information visit: http://www.hse.gov.uk/nuclear/quarterly-stat/2006-4.htm

Roche to host nuclear talks in Dublin – RTE

The Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, is to meet his counterparts from Iceland, Austria and Norway, along with the German State Secretary for the Environment, at Dublin Castle this morning.

On the agenda are common concerns arising from the trans-boundary implications of nuclear activities, including Britain’s Sellafield nuclear plant.

They will also discuss the use of nuclear energy as the answer to climate change.

—

later today I hope to meet with Lofoten against Sellafield (Norway) in Dublin City, other groups in the area, I can be contacted on mobile 085 711 6466

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor The Independent
Published: 18 March 2007

Safety alarms have been routinely ignored, operating instructions flouted, and safety equipment left broken at the controversial Sellafield nuclear plant, a devastating official inquiry has found.

The inquiry report – one of the most damning ever on a British nuclear installation – condemns “an alarm-tolerant culture”, “long-standing failings in some key safety arrangements” and a “failure to learn from previous events” at the Cumbrian complex.

The accident at the Thorp reprocessing plant – which was disclosed by The Independent on Sunday in 2005 – has kept the plant closed ever since, and was the focus of the investigation.

Some 83,000 litres of highly radioactive liquid leaked at the plant for at least eight months before the spill was detected.

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THE NRC is the USA has downgraded the safety of the largest nuclear plant in the country. full details from CNN

Regulators in September found that one of Palo Verde’s emergency diesel generators had been inoperative for 18 days.Emergency generators are critically important at nuclear reactors, providing electricity to pumps, valves and control rooms if the main electrical supply fails.

Greenpeace has won its High Court bid to make the UK government re-think its programme to build a new generation of nuclear power stations. The environmental pressure group argued that ministers had not consulted the public enough on the issue.

Greenpeace’s Emma Gibson told Sky News that the consultation on nuclear power had been “seriously flawed”.
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