'Reckless' Nuclear Plant Dumps Waste on Beaches
By Kenny Farquharson and Mark Macaskill
The Times of London
Sunday 06 March 2005
Safety breaches at one of Britain's biggest nuclear research
stations resulted in hundreds of thousands of radioactive particles
escaping into the environment, a former safety officer has revealed.
Highly radioactive waste was pumped into the sea and evidence of the
pollution was covered up by managers who had a "reckless" disregard
for public health, according to Herbie Lyall, a health physics
surveyor at the Dounreay plant in Caithness for 30 years.
They come as the plant's owner, the UK Atomic Energy Authority, is
facing a possible criminal prosecution over a series of radioactive
leaks. More than 50 radioactive particles have been recovered from a
public beach two miles west of the plant.
The latest find was on Friday when a stone contaminated with
caesium-137 was recovered from another beach 20 miles from Dounreay.
The authority has admitted that "at least several hundreds of
thousands" of plutonium and uranium particles, each the size of a
grain of sand, have been released from Dounreay.
A report by the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the
Environment, to be published next month, is expected to reveal
leukaemia "clusters" around Dounreay.
The committee studied leukaemia cases within a 15-mile radius of
nuclear power plants and military bases since the mid-1980s.
Lyall, who worked at Dounreay from 1960 to 1989, has spoken
publicly for the first time about his years there despite facing
possible prosecution under the Official Secrets Act.
In a dossier passed to The Sunday Times, Lyall claims: oHigh-level
radioactive waste was washed down drains intended for low-level waste.
This liquid went into effluent pits which were then flushed into the
open sea, sometimes on an incoming tide. oRadioactive materials were
handled without appropriate protection. Two workers who were
contaminated later died of cancer in their forties. oEffluent samples
were collected for analysis using a wellington boot on a piece of
string because sampling machinery was "a heap of rust".
One of the first discoveries of radioactive material on the
public beach next to the plant was "covered up".
Radioactive containers left in dumps were not marked properly,
leading to confusion over what they contained.
A dumping pit used for years for "high-level" waste disposal was
redesignated to be used as a temporary store for less hazardous
material. Lyall had intended that his account should come to light
only after his death. However, continuing concerns about the health
risks from contamination around the nuclear plant have persuaded him
to speak out.
"There have been so many lies told to con the public about
Dounreay that I feel I must put the record straight," said Lyall.
"This contamination is a legacy being left for my children's
children. It is an absolute disaster. They are talking about
prosecuting these people. They deserve execution, not prosecution.
This was people's lives they were playing with. They were acting like
nuclear cowboys."
Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader, is demanding a
ministerial inquiry. "These allegations raise grave and far-reaching
questions about the management of the Dounreay plant over the past 30
years," he said.
"They deserve the fullest possible investigation by ministers and
an end to the culture of complacency and cover-up that seems to
surround the plant.
"If this has been going on at Dounreay, what has been happening at
other nuclear establishments in the UK?" Lyall said he was a member of
a survey team that found a highly radioactive particle on Sandside
beach in 1984, a find that should have led to immediate public
warnings about the safety of the beach. The atomic energy authority
has denied any knowledge of the find.
Lyall accuses it of a cover-up and of risking the health of
families and tourists who visited the beach for 13 more years until
new concerns were raised.
He claims that he regularly complained to management and through
trade union officials about safety breaches, but action was rarely
taken. On one occasion, when he refused to carry out a dangerous
procedure that went against rules laid down by the government, he was
charged with refusing to obey an order, he said.
The two men who died of cancer had removed a faulty probe from a
reprocessor without adequate protection, Lyall said. "These two
gentlemen were not only my colleagues but personal friends," he said.
"I can't say if the dose they got from this probe contributed to
their deaths, but I have my own thoughts. This example is only the tip
of the iceberg."
Some management decisions left Lyall astonished. A pit used for
years as a dump for radioactive waste was turned into a temporary
storage area for non- hazardous materials, which carried an inevitable
risk of becoming contaminated, he said.
He witnessed the routine disposal of radioactive liquid waste down
drains intended for low-level waste. Managers would simply send it for
disposal minus its paperwork. One instance in 1988 involved the
disposal of 40 litres of highly radioactive glycol oil.
A spokesman for the authority yesterday conceded that safety
standards at Dounreay were less stringent in the past than now. Sandy
McWhirter, Dounreay project manager, admitted that some past practices
"could be considered reckless if not culpable today".
McWhirter described Lyall's criticisms as "one man's perception of
what was adequate" in the way of safety. "He may not have been in a
position to fully understand it."
Lyall, he said, was "a very enthusiastic fellow who had seen
various things and, in many cases, had misinterpreted them. In other
cases I have no way of checking what he says".
"Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one,some bigger than others"
.
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