"Reckless" nuclear plant dumps waste on beaches

The Sunday Times 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 form 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:

  • High-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.
  • Radioactive materials were handled without appropriate protection. Two workers who were contaminated later died of cancer in their forties.
  • Effluent 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.”.

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.

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”

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