urg:::Tougher UK & ICRP Tritium limits

[Len Kanaar - FoE Sydney]

Nuclear power flounders

The discovery of radioactive fish in the Severn estuary might yet 
break Britain's nuclear industry

By Severin Carrell

16 June 2002

The nuclear industry is facing a multi-million pound increase in its 
clean-up costs after it emerged that some of its radioactive waste 
was more dangerous than thought.

The Environment Agency (EA), the government regulator, is to impose 
tougher discharge limits on firms such as British Nuclear Fuels 
(BNFL), nuclear engineering company Devonport Management and British 
Energy, cutting their releases of radioactive tritium.

The clampdown began after safety studies around the Severn estuary 
close to medical-equipment company Amersham's radio-isotope plant 
near Cardiff discovered tritium in flounder and shellfish several 
hundred times higher than expected.

Tritium, a mildly radioactive by-product of industry production 
lines, is the most heavily discharged waste across the nuclear 
industry. BNFL's Sellafield reprocessing plant in Cumbria and 
Chapelcross nuclear power station in south-west Scotland discharge 
millions of litres of tritiated water and air every year. The 
agency's crackdown began after a report by specialists from the 
National Radiological Protection Board and St Bart's Hospital in 
London disclosed that tritium was at least twice as dangerous to 
humans as previously thought.

Organically bound tritium - the more dangerous form of tritium which 
was found in large quantities in the Severn estuary fish samples - 
can be up to 12.5 times more dangerous for infants. The International 
Commission on Radiological Protection is now expected to raise health 
limits for tritium two-fold for adults and four-fold for children.

Amersham was the first firm hit by the revised figures. Ordered by 
the EA to make an 85 per cent cut in tritium discharges, it has 
halted all releases of organically bound tritium as part of a =A320m 
programme to cut discharges.

Devonport Management, which refits Royal Navy nuclear submarines in 
Plymouth, is planning to spend up to =A35m building a new undersea 
pipeline to carry its tritiated water further out into the Tamar 
estuary. The pipeline was ordered by the EA after it granted 
Devonport a five-fold increase in its tritium discharge 
authorisations in February.

But the heaviest bills are likely to be born by BNFL, which has 
already spent =A32bn on cutting its radioactive discharges over the 
last 20 years. The EA is expected to ask for a deep cut in its 
tritium releases this summer, when it gives Michael Meacher, the 
environment minister, a revised discharge authorisation for 
Sellafield.

BNFL was unable to predict how much a cut would cost, but its 
finances are already fragile. The company said it expected to reduce 
radioactive discharges as part of an international convention.

But Stephen Tindale, executive director of Greenpeace, claimed: 
"These new estimates will be a major headache for the industry. It 
will make their dreams of building new nuclear power stations even 
more unrealistic and hasten the end to reprocessing at Sellafield."


=A9 2002 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd