Professor John Robertson OBA

From CBS News and other US media yesterday:

When Linda Morice and her family first moved to St. Louis in 1957, they had no idea they had anything to fear. Then, people started getting sick. “It was a slow, insidious process,” Morice said.

After the death of Morice’s mother, her physician uncle took her aside and gave her a stark warning: “Linda, I don’t believe St. Louis is a very healthy place to live. Everyone on this street has a tumor.” Their neighborhood was bordered by Coldwater Creek, a 19-mile tributary of the Missouri River. It wound through their backyards, near baseball fields, schools and cemeteries — and past lots where leaking barrels and open-air dumps of nuclear waste leeched into its waters.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coldwater-creek-st-louis-missouri-nuclear-waste-manhattan-project/

The Sellafield Nuclear Waste Re-processing plant in Cumbria, a short distance from the Scottish border does not leech radioactivity directly into the water courses of Scotland but it does leak in the coastal flows that wash north along the Scottish coast and does emit airborne particles on the prevailing winds north and north-east into Scotland.

I’ve written about this many times before and so what follows may not be of interest to regulars however, given that only a few hundred from the tens of thousands seeing the social media posts, read the full report, I think it’s worth repeating:

In the Guardian 24 February 2025, the above and this:

Sellafield has said nearly £3bn in new funding is “not enough” and bosses are now examining swingeing cuts, prompting fears over jobs and safety at the vast nuclear waste dump.

Sellafield’s chief executive, Euan Hutton, has told staff that the funding was “not enough” to carry out planned works, leaving bosses to make “difficult decisions” over spending, sources told the Guardian.

The public spending watchdog has said the ultimate cost of cleaning up Sellafield is expected to rise to £136bn, causing tensions with the Treasury as the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, attempts to tighten public spending and spur growth.

In 2023, the Guardian’s Nuclear Leaks investigation revealed a string of safety concerns at the site – from issues with alarm systems to problems staffing safety roles at its toxic ponds – as well as cybersecurity failings, radioactive contamination and allegations of a toxic workplace culture.

Europe’s most hazardous industrial site has previously been described by a former UK secretary of state as a “bottomless pit of hell, money and despair”.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/24/sellafield-nuclear-site-cuts-funding-union-spending

Why does it matter so much that radioactive leaks from Sellafield arrive so quickly and so frequently on Scotland’s coast and in her air?

Scotland’s cancer incidence level is much higher than the average in every part of world

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:

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:

1. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/04/sellafield-money-europe-toxic-nuclear-site-cumbria-safety
2. https://www.thenational.scot/politics/24044322.allan-dorans-scottish-labours-support-nuclear-fuel-poses-risk
3. https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/cancer-incidence-in-scotland/cancer-incidence-in-scotland-to-december-2021
4. https://gco.iarc.fr/today/en/dataviz/bars?types=0_1&mode=population&key=asr&sort_by=value1
5. https://www.statista.com/statistics/312961/new-cancer-cases-rate-england-age-gender/#:~:text=Cancer%20is%20an%20aggregation%20of,excluding%20non%2Dmelanoma%20skin%20cancer
6. 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).
7. 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.

Evidence of the Risk to Scotland from Sellafield

In the Guardian in December 2023, the above map, and this:

Sellafield, Europe’s most hazardous nuclear site, has a worsening leak from a huge silo of radioactive waste that could pose a risk to the public, the Guardian can reveal.

Concerns over safety at the crumbling building, as well as cracks in a reservoir of toxic sludge known as B30, have caused diplomatic tensions with countries including the US, Norway and Ireland, which fear Sellafield has failed to get a grip of the problems.https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/05/sellafield-nuclear-site-leak-could-pose-risk-to-public

BBC Scotland today is not reporting this but rather is pushing against the Scottish Government’s manifesto commitment to end the use of nuclear power, as we produce far more green energy than we can consume. There’s a no-brainer you’d think even Labour could get.

However, that map immediately prompted a quick reaction in me.

That plume of radiation just catching my birthplace of Duns near the border has been driven by a fairly neat little South-westerly, to only expand as it gets to Norway, but the prevailing winds in South-west Scotland are not so neatly defined.

See these wind roses for my hometown of Ayr and for nearby Glasgow:

The wind often blows from SSW and even at times from due South meaning that Sellafield radiation pollution could cover much of Scotland long before, and more concentratedly than, it reaches Norway. The USA and Ireland seem to have far less reason to worry than we do.

Water flows too, put Scotland most in harm’s way. See this:

It’s fairly clear where a leak into the Irish Sea from Sellafield (S) is going.