By Professor John Robertson OBA

From the Guardian today, the above, and:

Rachel Reeves has been urged not to carry out mooted funding cuts for nuclear sites including Sellafield amid safety concerns, as it emerged that the number of incidents where workers narrowly avoided harm had increased at the Cumbrian site.

The GMB union has written to Reeves, the chancellor, before Wednesday’s budget to raise safety concerns after rumours emerged that the budget for the taxpayer-owned Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) could be reduced, which could result in cuts at nuclear sites including Sellafield and Dounreay in Scotland.

In the letter to Reeves, seen by the Guardian, union leaders warned that a safety incident at Sellafield, Europe’s most hazardous industrial site, would “have devastating consequences far beyond the immediate community”. The NDA had a budget of £4bn in the last financial year. _{https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/28/sellafield-work-accidents-reeves-budget}

So, Sellafield first, then Dounreay:

Sellafield:

Two recent reports in the National (links below), by Ayr MP Allan Dorans, have exposed levels of radioactivity in seafood, other wildlife and in river estuary sediment, from the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria, described recently in the Guardian as ‘Europe’s most toxic nuclear site‘. These were far above levels considered safe by the UK after the Chernobyl power station leaks in the Ukraine or the by the EU after the Fukushima power station leaks in Japan.

The reports did not, however, consider the level of cancer incidence in Scotland compared with other parts of the world. First from Public Health Scotland in 2023:

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Cancer incidence in Scotland, age-adjusted rates and 95% confidence intervals (CI) of expected rates,* 2010-2021

The rate, or risk, of new cancers also increased to 644 per 100,000 (an increase of 3.1% compared with 2019) and was higher than expected from the long-term trend. 

Imagine these were drug cases. Would our media want to know how they compare with the rest of the world? Just a bit. ‘Drug capital of Europe!!‘

Note: Cancer cases rather than cancer deaths are a better measure of the risk from pollution of the environment. Scotland’s superior NHS is, no doubt, compensating for what follows.

From the World Health Organisation in 2022:

The average level of cancer cases in Europe is only 280 per 100 000 compared with 640 in Scotland. In North America, it’s 364.7 and in Oceania (Australia, NZ), it’s 409. In Asia and Africa, I feel sure, detection rates are even lower due to ‘third-world’ health provision.

Scotland is clearly the cancer capital of the whole world. Why is that not news?

And England, most of it further way from Sellafield and Trident than most Scots are? From the Gov UK site, the rate is 540 per 100 000, also very high globally but significantly lower than in Scotland at 640.

With the most dangerous radioactive plant in Europe at Sellafield in Cumbria, only miles from the border, with the experimental nuclear facility at Dounreay in Caithness, with UK and for some time, US, nuclear submarines and missiles based only 35-40 miles from Glasgow and sailing along the West of Scotland coastline, and with two major power stations at Hunterston and Torness, both within the densely populated central belt, Scotland has been exposed to large-scale and largely unknown risks for 70 years now.

While no government-funded scientists will ever admit to any link between the contamination and cancer cases, the onus is not on us but on them to prove there is none.

And before you say it – Scots smoke more? No they don’t.

15% of Scots smoke. Fewer than in most European countries. See this:

Links and sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/04/sellafield-money-europe-toxic-nuclear-site-cumbria-safety

https://www.thenational.scot/politics/24044322.allan-dorans-scottish-labours-support-nuclear-fuel-poses-risk

https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/cancer-incidence-in-scotland/cancer-incidence-in-scotland-to-december-2021

https://gco.iarc.fr/today/en/dataviz/bars?types=0_1&mode=population&key=asr&sort_by=value1

https://www.statista.com/statistics/312961/new-cancer-cases-rate-england-age-gender/#:~:text=Cancer%20is%20an%20aggregation%20of,excluding%20non%2Dmelanoma%20skin%20cancer

https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-health-survey-2022-volume-1-main-report/pages/11/#:~:text=As%20noted%20above%2C%20in%202022,%25%20and%2013%25%20respectively).

https://www.euronews.com/health/2023/08/14/smoking-in-europe-which-countries-are-the-most-and-least-addicted-to-tobacco-and-vaping#:~:text=According%20to%20data%20compiled%20by,smoked%20fewer%20than%2020%20units.

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Dounreay:

A BBC Report 23 September 2024, has nothing to say about just why a robot snake is needed for work on the clear-up of the Dounreay facility in Caithness.

We have:

From BBC Scotland today:

More than 500 members of the Unite union at the Dounreay nuclear power complex have voted to strike in a dispute over pay.

The workers, who will take action on Wednesday, have rejected the latest offer to resolve the matter.

Meanwhile, the Prospect union said in a close ballot its members had voted to accept the deal, and the GMB union said the result of its vote was expected later but expected to back strike action. _{https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq5nnl9vjzeo}

While it is always disturbing to hear of industrial conflict in a nuclear plant, these two-day strikes will, relatively speaking, make little difference to the decommissioning process.

Why?

Decommissioning began in 2019 and the plan envisages 50-60 years to complete but ‘complete’ doesn’t mean to the company, Magnox Ltd., what it means to most of us and the site will be under surveillance, i.e. not usable, for at least another 300 years or 110 000 days[i].

However, according to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, one of the most dangerous elements, left on the soil, Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24 000 years.[ii]

How much will the decommissioning cost? According to World Nuclear News in 2019, £400 million,[iii] but 5 years later, according to the Northern Times in April 2024, £7.9 billion![iv]

Researchers based at Oxford University, reporting conveniently for some political forces, in July 2014, revisited earlier studies of the incidence of leukaemia around Sellafield and Dounreay and concluded that children, teenagers and young adults currently living close to Sellafield and Dounreay were not at an increased risk of developing cancers. 

The researchers, dependent upon UK Government grants for their survival, notably downplayed two earlier studies finding a raised risk of leukaemia among 0–14 and 15-24 year-olds, living within 12.5 km of Dounreay during the period 1979–1984[i] and in a subsequent study in 1996, reported an excess of childhood leukaemia and Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (NHL) within 25 km of Dounreay for the period 1968–1993.[ii]

The researchers do not tell us just how many cases, how many more children and young adults than expected, had developed these often-deadly cancers, but 1 287 cases near seven nuclear sites in Scotland were looked at in the second study. Around Dounreay, almost twice as many cases as expected were found. The difference was greatest around Dounreay but even if we share the 1 287 between the seven sites, we get around 180 cases near Dounreay, of which half or 90, might not have occurred if the plant had never been built. To, me that’s ‘significant’ and I feel sure it was for them and their families.

With every passing month, it becomes clearer that Scottish Labour must reconsider its plans for a nuclear Scotland.

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[i] Heasman MA, Kemp IW, Urquhart JD, Black R. Childhood leukaemia in northern Scotland. Lancet. 1986;327 (8475:266.

[ii] Sharp L, Black RJ, Harkness EF, McKinney PA. Incidence of childhood leukaemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in the vicinity of nuclear sites in Scotland, 1968–93. Occup Environ Med. 1996;53 (12:823–831.

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[i] https://www.neimagazine.com/features/featuredounreay-site-restoration-plan/

[ii] https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/radwaste.html

[iii] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Dounreay-decommissioning-framework-contracts-award

[iv] https://www.northern-times.co.uk/news/new-end-date-at-dounreay-will-mean-a-spend-of-7-9bn-347604/