Britain’s Dirtiest Beaches Are Dirtier than Poop - Don’t mention the Radio-toxic Pu
Seascale and Haverigg are in the top 10 dirtiest beaches for poo - they also contain Pu (Plutonium) but no-one is looking at the health impacts of long lived radio-toxic pollution on our beaches.
The West Cumbrian coastline cradling the World Heritage Site of the Lake District has two entries in the top 10 dirtiest beaches featured in yesterday’s Express. While much is made quite rightly of the health impacts of sewage pollution no-one is willing to talk about the Pu (Plutonium) on West Cumbrian beaches and in harbours near the worlds riskiest nuclear waste site. Sellafield has a larger workforce 11,000+ than all the surrounding towns and villages put together. According to the Environment Agency “We are working with Sellafield Limited to investigate the potential impact of non-radioactive discharges from the Sellafield site. The primary focus is on sewage originating from the toilet facilities provided on site for the Sellafield workforce. The work is considering whether the level of sewage treatment needs to be enhanced to improve and protect the bathing water quality at Seascale thus protecting public health”. 2024 Bathing Water Profile for Seascale.
The ever expanding nuclear waste site has been discharging not only sewage but radioactive pollution including Plutonium into the Irish Sea for decades. Sellafield’s Sewage Treatment works has been known to contain radioactive crapola along with the effluent from the 11,000 strong workforce. Last year the nuclear waste site reported: “Sellafield Ltd incident report – Sewage Treatment Works suspended solids – 16 October 2023 -Following routine effluent sampling, an elevated ‘suspended solids’ result has been measured in the Sellafield site, Sewage Treatment Plant. The resulting measurement is above the permitted limit. There had been no increasing trends from the plant or abnormalities leading up to the elevated result.” The “suspended solids” they are talking about are radioactive wastes “above the permitted limit” within the Sellafield Sewage Treatment Plant.
Sellafield basically monitors itself on a day to day basis and provides their own monitoring information to the regulators so this is quite an admission. Even the cats on the Sellafield site have Pu (plutonium) in their poop as discovered when Sellafield started handing out feral cats on the site to local shelters for rehoming to families.
Nuclear wastes continue to arrive daily and a vicious cocktail of nuclear wastes continues to pour into the Irish Sea daily. Enough was enough decades ago. But this gargantuan radio-toxic turd on the Lake District coastline continues to accept nuclear wastes from existing reactors in the UK while MPs, government and the nuclear industry agitate for ever more nuclear waste from new build next to Sellafeld and elsewhere.
The cocktail of radioactive wastes on our beaches is a direct result of the uranium fuel industry whose product is actually nuclear wastes rather than the ephemeral here today gone tomorrow electricity.
So the nuclear waste industry’s message is ‘Don’t mention the Pu.’ In fact the nuclear industry has a vested interest in encouraging youngsters to dig for hours on the beaches - its great PR for the nuclear waste industry and says “look we are great neighbours and we are giving you (tax payers) money for your beach events because the beaches are soooo safe.”
OK so whats the harm in digging for hours on beaches near Sellafield or splashing about in Whitehaven harbour courtesy of the Sellafield funded new watersports centre?
Recently we took samples from Whitehaven harbour silt and had them analysed in a world class laboratory who found AM241 at something over 37 bq/kg. The UK Health Security Agency (formerly Public Health England) are yet to reply to us as to the health detriment of ingesting or inhaling this level of an alpha emitting isotope. To put it in context the US level for ingestion of AM241 for a young child is 2 bq/kg. Before the nuclear waste industry started discharging its waste to the Irish Sea (and the air and land) no child would have come into contact with ANY man-made radio-toxic materials while building a sand castle.
There is no level of radiation exposure which is “safe.” ANY exposures to radioactive sand and silt WILL result in some detriment but we cannot easily and definitively say by how much and there lies the rub and the shield behind which the nuclear industry hides its damage to human health.
It can be argued that being in and playing in an environment contaminated by these nuclides is a breach of our human right to life. This is outlined in Dr Ian Fairlie’s new book - https://www.ianfairlie.org/news/new-book-on-radiation-whistleblowers/
It is clear that playing in an environment contaminated by the nuclear waste industry is akin to involuntarily breathing in second-hand smoke from cigarettes. In other words, it's like a negative lottery ticket: if your number comes up… your health is compromised …. even to death.
Put simply there should be zero concentrations of radionuclides on our beaches and in our harbours (apart from radon gas) so ANY level is a cause for concern.
The nuclear industry and regulators invariably tell us that the concentrations are below "safe” limits. This is hogwash and the public should not be taken in by it.
It is deemed morally repugnant for people to come into contact with bacteria from poo on the beaches but the nuclear industry gets a free ride when it comes to radio-toxic contamination including Pu (plutonium) and one of its decay products AM241. This radio-toxic pollution is far more insidious than sewage and impacts not just this but future generations into eternity.
It is not ‘just’ the poop from the 11,000+ Sellafield workforce going into the Irish Sea which of itself is a detriment to Seascale and surrounds. The biggest crapola is the radioactive effluent from Sellafield and that just keeps on coming. The Environment Agency and other regulators have dropped the ball big time when it comes to public health and radioactive wastes.
Enough was enough decades ago but still the nuclear waste industry continues to contaminate our beaches - “Dirty Beaches” - indeed!
Write to your MP and ask what they are doing to protect people from radio-toxic pollution on our beaches coming in off each tide from Sellafield.
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