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Permanent pollution > Discharges
Since its opening in 1951, there have been substantial discharges to
both the sea and into the atmosphere. The first discharges were a
direct reesult of the United Kingdom’s nuclear weapons programme,
and exact information concerning the nature and quantity of these
first discharges remains unknown.
Beginning in 1952, the United Kingdom began deliberate discharges
of large quantities of radioactivity into the Irish Sea from the
Sellafield site as an experiment. The purpose was to study how the
different radioactive fission products would behave in the
environment, and how they behaved in relation to each other. It was
stated that fairly large quantities were discharged, otherwise the
aims of the experiment would have been “defeated“ and that the
discharges were kept at a level to allow readily detectable levels of
radioactivity to be detected in fish, seaweed and shore sand.
Moreover, the level of discharges were increased in 1956 partly to
dispose of unwanted waste, partly to yield better experimental
data. 177
In the 1960s and 1970s the discharges from Sellafield increased
dramatically, largely as the result of increased alpha-emitting
radionuclides discharged from B-205, but also from discharges of
water from the spent fuel storage tanks. In the mid-1970s discharges
peaked – in the five-year period between 1974 and 1978 the plant is
believed to have discharged more than 1000 TBq each of alpha- and
beta-emitting radionuclides. In this period the amount of plutonium
released to the Irish Sea was more than twice that released in the
Chernobyl disaster a decade later.
Discharges of technetium-99 (Tc-99)were also very high in the
1970s, but were markedly reduced in the 1980s as liquid waste was
stored on shore instead of discharged. However, in 1994 discharges
of Tc-99 resumed and exceeded the 1970 levels.
In general discharges declined in the 1980s, although an accident in
1983 resulted in an uncontrolled discharge of radioactivity and more
than 20 kilometres of beaches were closed because of the high
levels of contamination found there.Invesigations in 1984 found high
levels of plutonium and americium along a long strech of coastline
owing to their behaviour in the marine environment having been
different to that predicted.
Currently present day discharges are dominated by discharges from
B-205 and from the THORP reprocessing plant which started
operation in 1994. In addition, there are sources of releases from the
site due to decommissioning work, operation of Magnox reactors and
from the spent fuel storage facilities.
BNFL currently has authorisation to discharge 90Tera
becquerels/year (TBq/yr) of Technitium99 into the Irish Sea until
2006. Tc-99 has been found in marine life as far away as Norway
and Denmark. Scientists have estimated that official esimates of the
collective doses received from Tc-99 may have been underestimated
by as much as 1,000 times.
Throughputs of the two Sellafield reprocessing plants have been low
in recent years, so it is likely that the total number of all radionuclides
actually discharged into the Irish Sea will rise again over the next few
years. Although the UK Environment Agency says its proposed
changes will “represent 20-30% reductions in the potential
177 Dr. John Dunster, UKAEA, to delegates at the 2nd United Nations Conference concerning the Peaceful Uses of Atomic
Energy, 1958, quoted in F. Berkhout, Radioactive Waste – Politics and Technology, Routledge, 1991.
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