Up-to-date nuclear test needed in estuary
IN reference to your article titled Radioactive mud to be dumped off Cardiff is safe, say experts, (Western Mail, March 28), because of possible contamination from an incident at Oldbury in 2011 and site clearance involving contaminated buildings at Berkley in 2012, I believe a more up-to-date assessment of the mud downstream at Hinkley would be preferred, rather than an old sample from 2009 being re-tested.
It would also be convenient to have data available now before Intermediate Level Waste from Oldbury is stored on the Berkley site, as this will create contamination itself. Nowhere else in Britain has three nuclear sites discharging into the same stretch of water. The Thames Estuary has none.
The tone of the report, that the mud is within safety guidelines, is in itself quite worrying. How far inside safety guidelines is far more important, as there has to be a clear margin 10x below the limit, in case of spills, which are frequent in nuclear operations .
Radioactive contamination can take hundreds of years to dissipate, which is why it is important to have a very large margin for safety.
I did not believe, personally, that in normal operation, gas-cooled reactors would pollute the coast to the same degree that watercooled reactors will, but then there are abnormal situations where it becomes convenient for the sea to be used to cut down operator exposure. An example of this was
when the spent fuel remained in the ponds for too long in the early 1970s at all three Magnox reactors, and the resultant pollution was way too high.
Much of this pollution was soluble and thought to just migrate and disperse, but modern evidence has shown that re-concentration can occur, and this is being experienced now in the Pacific since the Fukushima disaster.
Tim Deere Jones has continually highlighted this new evidence and has a right to be taken seriously.
It may well be that there is some actinide pollution in the Severn mud and this will be added to by the operation of water-cooled reactors . I therefore call on the Welsh Government and Cardiff City Council to get it straight, before any more discharges are made, from any of the three Severn Estuary nuclear sites. Wayne Jones Participant in both Sizewell B and Hinkley C public inquiries