After 60 years of nuclear power generation and unknown further decades to make the sites ‘safe’ Ayrshire does not need the new risk and contamination Scottish Labour offers it

The Labour candidate for Central Ayrshire, Alan Gemmell, is a ‘proud GMB member.’ The GMB union helped found [i] the Labour Party, funds it [ii] and is the union for nuclear industry workers. Gemmell is a certain recipient of that funding. The other two candidates, Irene Campbell for North Ayrshire where the Hunterston power station is located and Elaine Stewart for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock, will be obliged to follow the UK Labour line supporting the building of new stations.

Hunterston A was commissioned in 1964 and taken out of service in 1990 but full clearance of the site will not happen before 2080.[iii]

Hunterston B was commissioned in 1976 and began defueling in 2022 but a date for full site clearance is not apparent. [iv] Radioactive isotopes in the soil will remain active for a very long time. For example, one isotope, Plutonium-239, has a half-life of 24 000 years, by which time only half of the radioactivity will have gone!

There have been many reports of leaks over the long timespan, from the two power stations, into the Clyde estuary and into the atmosphere near several villages and towns.

In September 2009, the Sunday Herald reported that ‘thousands of litres of radioactive waste’ had leaked into the Clyde and that the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) had accused the station of six breaches of legal promises it had made to the local population and environment.[v]

Highly toxic spent fuel flasks from Hunterston were taken by road and rail through Ayrshire to the Sellafield reprocessing plant in Cumbria every 2 or 3 days. [vi] This may be ongoing.

Most official research into the health effects of living near Hunterston A and B has found, according to the researchers, no significant risks and, in particular no evidence of unusual levels of cancers.

For example, research by Aberdeen University in 1999 did find that more tumours (14%) of the nervous system were observed than expected within 25km of Hunterston but this was considered to be not statistically significant.[vii]

However, in 1987 the British Medical Journal reported on childhood leukaemia in West Berkshire and North Hampshire, within 10km of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston and the nearby Royal Ordnance factory, finding 29 cases among 0–4-year-olds when only 14.4 were expected based on national levels and 41 cases among 0–14-year-olds when only 28.6 were expected. [viii]

Then, in 1989, research by Southampton General Hospital found that the suggestion of raised cancer levels among young people around the Sellafield ‘has been supported by the findings’ [ix]. Contaminated effluent from the Sellafield reprocessing plant in Cumbria, described as ‘Europe’s most hazardous nuclear site’ [x], is carried by prevailing currents around the Ayrshire coast only a few miles away.

Much more dramatic, in 2002, the Guardian reported cancer rates in parts of Somerset, 5 miles downwind of the Hinkley Point plant, up to 6 times higher than the national average. [xi]

Then, in 2015, peer-reviewed research found breast cancer risks at up to 6 times higher than average around nuclear power stations in Wales and England. [xii]

The same researchers looked at breast cancer risk in Essex and found higher rates in disadvantaged areas than more affluent areas, near Bradwell power station.

Returning to the ‘official data’ recording levels of radioactivity in sediment, in soil or in life-forms, none can seriously doubt the accuracy of these but what we can legitimately do is question the safety of these levels of contamination. We can do this because they vary from country to country and over time so, by definition, are subjectively based, often influenced by economic priorities. The safe level for radioactivity in food in the EU is currently 370Bq/Kg for infants and for other foodstuff, it is 600. [xiii] In the UK, post Chernobyl it was 1 000 [xiv] and across the EU including Britain, post Fukushima for Japanese imports, it was 100 for general foods and 50 for infant products.[xv]

We have seen historically the scientific community fail to protect the public from the devastating effects of tobacco, asbestos, Thalidomide and, more recently, Primodos. The nuclear industry and the associated weapons development is an enormously powerful political and economic force. Scientists working in research centres and universities funded by government grants face powerful inhibitory pressures when it comes to doing any research that might undermine them. A powerful cultural predisposition against finding evidence of harm, against questioning the setting of ‘safe’ levels of exposure, overwhelms all but a very few and the latter do not last long.

The voters in Ayrshire and across Scotland need to think about this before voting Labour.

[i] https://www.gmb.org.uk/networks/politics/winning-for-working-people

[ii] https://www.gmb.org.uk/campaigns/voteyes/

[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunterston_A_nuclear_power_station

[iv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunterston_B_nuclear_power_station

[v] https://www.robedwards.com/2009/09/revealed-radioactive-waste-leak-from-hunterston.html

[vi] https://www.ayradvertiser.com/news/15546135.concern-at-nuclear-waste-on-south-ayrshire-railways/

[vii] https://www.jstor.org/stable/27731111

[viii] https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:2936bac7-ec76-4120-a9af-0a1825b41a65

[ix] https://www.jstor.org/stable/2983129

[x] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/05/sellafield-nuclear-site-leak-could-pose-risk-to-public#:~:text=Sellafield%2C%20Europe’s%20most%20hazardous%20nuclear,public%2C%20the%20Guardian%20can%20reveal.

[xi] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/jul/14/greenpolitics.science