Last Saturday while I was out for a walk on Latter Rig, there was a plume of thick black smoke curling round the Duddon Estuary from the west coast. The first stomache plummeting thought was ‘something’s happened at Sellafield’. The fire turned out to have been at a garage in Haverigg. people were told to stay indoors and the nearby holiday park was evacuated. The fire needed 8 engines from across the region to bring it under control. This got me thinking about the risks at Sellafield. Even without the Moorside plan going ahead there are multiple risks ranging from a large gas plant and gas pipeline on the site, to large amounts of heat generating liquid radioactive wastes, nitric and sulphuric acids. A release during a fire of just one percent of the Highly Active Liquid wastes resulting from reprocessing would be devastating to our European neighbours.
Radiation Free Lakeland 9th July 2016 read more »