An urgent request has been sent to Sellafield to monitor and retrieve radioactive particles from St bees beach ahead of Cumbria Wildlife Trust”s ‘Beached Art’ day. Sellafield have treated this straightforward request under Freedom of Information rules which means that there will not be a reply for at least a month and then we may have to pay for the request to be answered. The request has been sparked by a citizen science project carried out by Radiation Free Lakeland volunteers in collaboration with nuclear science undergraduates at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the US. The accuracy of the independent report has been confirmed by the Environment Agency (letter from EA below) . Marianne Birkby of RaFL says “the EA recognise the accuracy of our citizen science project and the accuracy of the students work, but they fail to acknowledge that our samples were taken without the use of expensive detecting (or any) equipment, Also plutonium was not tested for, so this report while accurate does not reveal the full picture. This means that the volume and viciousness of radioactive particles being washed onto our beaches is far greater than is being admitted to. It also means the likelihood of inhalation and ingestion of particles by beach users is far greater than “low.” Cumbria Wildlife Trust and other beach users have faith in the authorities when they say the beaches are safe. This faith is misplaced. The nuclear waste scandal has been going on for decades polluting our beautiful beaches with insidious radioactive particles and it will continue unabated unless people square up to the nuclear industry and say enough is enough”
Radiation Free Lakeland 24th July 2018 read more »
