Nuclear waste has no place in a child’s sandcastle
THE nuclear industry tells us it has had a lightbulb moment: ‘The rare element americium is not found in nature, but is a by-product of the decay of plutonium, which is produced during the operation of nuclear reactors. A team of scientists led by the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL), working with the University of Leicester, have extracted americium from some of the UK’s plutonium stockpile and used the heat generated from this highly radioactive material to generate enough electric current to light up a small lightbulb within a special shielded area in NNL’s central laboratory in Cumbria.’ Americium sounds like dangerous stuff. I am a member of Radiation Free Lakeland, and when we undertook a citizen science project with nuclear science students from the U.S., we took silt samples all along the west coast of Cumbria. The students found notifiable levels of americium and caesium, another radioactive element, in one third of the samples. When we alerted the Environment Agency, they told us that this highly radioactive material and other isotopes not found in nature were perfectly safe in the environment. The theory is that children would not encounter and inhale hot isotopes as it ‘is homogenised through the dynamic beach environment’. The nuclear industry is desperate to present itself in exciting ways to an increasingly sceptical public. Powering space vehicles with americium is seen as a new wheeze. But it is unethical to send nuclear waste into space. It is beyond unethical for the regulators who are supposed to be watchdogs for the public’s safety to be nonchalant about ‘homogenised’ americium and caesium on West Cumbrian beaches. It is not all right for the Government and industry to act in collusion in this way, damaging the health of this and future generations with dangerous, highly radioactive isotopes that have no place in nature or in children’s sandcastles on the beach. Our children have no ‘special shielded area’, such as the one in the NNL’s Central Laboratory.
MARIANNE BIRKBY, Milnthorpe, Cumbria.