By Professor John Robertson OBA
In the Texas Tribune, two days ago:
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take up a yearslong dispute over a plan to ship highly radioactive nuclear waste to rural West Texas, a case that could have sweeping implications for how the nation deals with a growing stockpile of waste generated by nuclear power plants.
A company called Interim Storage Partners has long pursued the plan to move “high-level” nuclear waste from power plants across the nation to an existing nuclear waste storage facility in Andrews County, on the Texas-New Mexico border.
Last year, in a Texas-led lawsuit, a federal court blocked the plan and threw out Interim Storage Partners’s federal license to handle the waste. A federal appeals court upheld the decision earlier this year, but the company and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission urged the Supreme Court to reconsider the ruling.
On 24 September 2021:
Texas is suing the Biden administration over a recent federal regulatory decision that approved a company’s years-long plan to ship some of the nation’s most radioactive waste to a facility in Far West Texas.
Last week, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted a high-level nuclear waste license to a company called Interim Storage Partners, despite a new state law passed earlier this month blocking the storage or disposal of this type of waste in the state. The law includes exceptions for waste already housed at existing nuclear power plants.
The license gives Interim Storage Partners permission to ship 5,000 metric tons of “high-level” nuclear waste – mostly generated by power plants – to a site in Andrews County.
US democracy has been looking a bit rough round the edges recently but this does highlight an ability at state level to fight central/federal authorities at the highest level. That’s something we need in Scotland.
We already know how dangerous such plants can be:
Sand castle building is still a thing. I see them often on my dog walks. The children building them get right into it, throwing dry sand around, inhaling particles by the million, even swallowing them.
Just down the coast, in Cumbria, in June 2024, hundreds of Brownies, wee girls from 5 to 11 years-old and their families competed to build the best:
But, according to a letter from Radiation Free Lakeland:
Last year 40 radioactive particles and objects were found on Sellafield beach. This is the area being used for a sandcastle competition by Seascale Brownies in an event sponsored by the Mid-Copeland Community GDF Partnership.
We urge you to cancel the sponsorship of activities involving children digging for hours on the beach.
If the Mid Copeland Community Partnership refuse to cancel the sandcastle competition then we urge you to at the very least give parents sight of the latest “Sellafield Particles in the Environment (1-Jan to 14-July 2023)” report which found: “During the period 1st January to 14th July 2023 a total area of 76 ha of the beaches along the Cumbrian coast were monitored against a programme target of 65 ha. A total of 59 particles and 2 larger objects were detected, recovered and analysed,” Of the 59 particles and 2 larger objects found, 39 of these were at Sellafield beach in the area being sponsored by the Mid-Copeland Community Partnership for a sand-castle competition. Most of the particles are “alpha rich” this means that if they are inhaled or ingested they will cause harm and most especially to children and pregnant women.
The advice from Public Health England is that the risk of encountering and ingesting an alpha rich particle is “low” and equivalent to other risks beach users take. However, a parent can see if a child is about to drown in a rock pool but cannot see the alpha rich particle being put into their child’s mouth or eyes.
The Seascale Gala is celebrating 175 years of the village. This celebration should recognise that 175 years ago a child making a sand sculpture would not risk encountering any alpha rich radioactive particles. After 70 years of Sellafield that is no longer the case and the Mid-Copeland GDF Community Partnership should acknowledge that fact and at least warn parents taking part in their sponsored sand sculpture competition that their child has a “low risk” of encountering radioactive wastes in the form of alpha rich particles and objects on the beach.
We recently had the silt at Whitehaven Harbour analysed and the results were horrifying.
The laboratory used wasEberline Analytical/Oak Ridge LaboratoryUSA
“Eberline Analyticals’ Oak Ridge laboratory utilizes state-of-the-art analytical techniques and laboratory equipment. Key personnel have over 100 years of combined technical experience in the nuclear industry.”
Eberline Analytical recieved the sample in the first week of May 2024 and we recieved a 65 page report back from them on 30th May 2024 (see attached). The report makes it clear that dangerous levels of Americium 241 are present in Queen’s Dock – this material can only have come from the nuclear industry and is also present on Seascale beach in “alpha rich” particles.
The calibration used by Eberline (page 16 -19 of their Report) includes the use of AM 243 which was 36.27 kBq/g. On page 44 of the report is a stark comparison. It would be expected that if Americium was present at all at Queen’s Dock (it should not be there at all) then the Am 241 would be a far smaller spike than the calibration isotope of Am 243. The visual illustrates that the spike from Whitehaven Am 241 is bigger ie it is higher than the calibration isotope of Am 243 at 36.27 kBq/g. The sample we provided to Eberline was a teaspoonful of dried silt.
The speed in which we got this analysis back from the laboratory is in stark contrast to Sellafield’s monitoring program which takes months and years to provide minimal information to the public.
Please warn the public in order to let the public make up their own minds whether they want their children to take the “low risk” of encountering highly dangerous radioactive particles.
Readers may remember that Seascale was formerly the name of the Sellafield Nuclear Re-processing plant responsible for levels of radioactivity in Maidens shellfish and in Troon Harbour Seals way above the safe level. See:
https://www.thenational.scot/news/24091797.sellafield-nuclear-plant-cancer-fears-raised-scottish-mp/
Radiation from nuclear plants has been linked to increased incidents of childhood leukaemia:
German research suppressed by Labour Government and media in 2008 revealed under 5’s living near nuclear plants more than twice as likely to develop leukemia:
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Of course it is good that the US Constitution enables citizens to exercise their rights to challenge decisions, which might affect them. made by other people, companies or Government. Constitutions specify rights which citizens have ……
….. unlike the UK which its propagandists tell us has ‘an unwritten constitution’, based on the Burkean idea of institutions and practices. But, as the recent Tory administrations have shown, this matters not a monkey’s fuck if the Government of the day has a majority and can pass just about any legislation it likes based on the doctrine of ‘the crown in Parliament’, which gives the government the power to act in the way monarchs used to be able to do. In recent years the media have taken to calling these ‘King Henry VIII powers’. He, of course was the King of England and his powers applied only to England. But, such a trifle does not bother the British nationalists including the alleged civil rights champion Sir Bung-me. He, like Theresa May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak continues to deny Scotland and Wales any right to choose to be independent. Sir Bung-me had to be reminded by Sinn Fein that Northern Ireland had the right under the Good Friday Agreement to have a border poll and that this Border Poll would also be participated in by citizens of the Irish Republic. Charging on oafishly, Sir Bung-me announced he would campaign for the north to remain British and again had to be reminded that he was acting ultra vires – a legal term of which he might be aware of. Perhaps he needs to be given another pair of reading glasses to read the small print.
Alasdair Macdonald.
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SCOTLAND MUST CONTACT THIS ORGANISATION
TO GAIN INFORMATION HOW SCOTLAND CAN USE ALL ANGLES TO DEFEAT THE ILLEGAL NUCLEAR PLANS FOR SCOTLAND
WE MUST NOT LET ANOTHER COUNTRY RUIN OUR COUNTRIES FUTURE.
THEY CAN RUIN THEIR OWN COUNTRY BUT NEVER EVER DUMP
Their NUCLEAR WASTE poisoning Scotlands land for years to come
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