Umweltverbrechen multinationaler Konzerne - Greenpeace

Type of damage Windscale Fire
radiological impact of discharges”, the actual radiological impact,
compared with 1998, is likely to increase by a factor of between 2
and 4.
BNFL continues to discharge plutonium into the Irish Sea. This is
only going to make a difficult problem worse. And should BNFL
achieve the throughputs it wants in its two reprocessing plants,
plutonium discharges will once again start to rise. In addition, British
research suggests that more than a third of the plutonium discharged
into the sea from Sellafield has gone astray. Some of it may be
buried in sand, but more than previously thought could have been
carried by currents out of the Irish Sea. Between 1952 and 1995,
Sellafield dumped an estimated 182 kilograms of plutonium (alpha)
down sea pipelines into the Irish Sea. This amounts to 717
terabecquerels (TBq) of radioactivity--about half the fallout of
plutonium in the entire North Atlantic from 520 atmospheric bomb
tests in the 1960s.
The British research says there is a "significant shortfall" between
this and the amount detected by monitoring. They carried out a
detailed audit and conclude that 36 per cent (257 TBq) of the
plutonium is unaccounted for, along with up to 40 per cent (387 TBq)
of plutonium's daughter element, americium.
Global nuclear transports - Potential marine and terrestrial pollution:
In 1999, BNFL shipped its first ever consignment of plutonium MOX
fuel around the globe from Sellafield to Japan. During the transit, it
was revealed that BNFL had deliberately falsfied critical quality
control data during the production of the fuel. BNFL ultimately was
forced to admit the falsification, and its Japanese clients demanded
the material be returned. If the fuel had been loaded into a
Japanese reactor, the potential risk for accident could have been
signficantly increased.
In June 2002, BNFL plans to return the reject material to the UK.
The shipment contains enough plutonium for 50 nuclear weapons; in
the event of an attack or accident, the shipment could put at risk
dozens of coastal nations on its 30,000 kilometre voyage back from
Japan.
Workers on site were explosed to up to 150 times the maximum
permissible level of radioactivity and local people receive 10 times
the maximum permitted lifetime dose. The UK Atomic Energy
Authority knew this but decided not to evacuate the area. Two days
after the fire, when it was clear that local milk supplies had been
contaminated by the radio-isotope iodine-131 which affects human
thyroid glands, the government confiscated two million litres of milk
from the cows grazing in an area of more than 500 sq km around the
plant.
Twenty years after the fire, in 1982, the UK National Radiation
Protection Board published a report stating that the effects of the 41
isotopes released at the time of the 1957 Windscale Fire had caused
260 cancer cases, 13 of them fatal. However, other scientists dispute
these figures, saying the NRPB underestimated fatilites due to
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