Umweltverbrechen multinationaler Konzerne - Greenpeace

ignoring the release of polonium-210, a strong alpha-emitter. These
scientists say more than a 1000 deaths resulted from the Windscale
accident.
Significantly elevated levels of childhood leukaemia and Down's
syndrome in childen are blamed on the Windscale fire.
Marine pollution
There has been a worrying accumulation of Tc-99 andother
radionuclides in marine life. As an example the amount of plutonium-
241 now accumulating in shellfish in the Irish Sea give serious cause
for concern. Shellfish regularly breach the Community Food
Intervention Level of 80Bq per kilogram for plutonium-241 in the
Sellafield coastal area and the Cumbrian coast. Despite this under
proposals from the Environment Agency of England and Wales for
the future regulation of discharges from Sellafield, BNFL will be able
to increase the throughput of its two reprocessing plants over the
next decade, and hence increase its discharges. This is despite the
fact that the Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs
(DEFRA) in its recent Consultation Paper (2001) on "Statutory
Guidance on the Regulation of Radioactive Discharges into the
Environment from Nuclear Licensed Sites" states that:
"When considering applications for discharge authorizations, the
Environment Agency should take into account Community Food
Intervention Levels so that limits on routine radioactive discharges
should not, in general, be set at a level where CFILs may be
exceeded".
The amount of plutonium-241 now accumulating in shellfish in the
Irish Sea gives serious cause for concern. Shellfish regularly breach
the Community Food Intervention Level. Plutonium discharged from
Sellafield since the 1950s was expected to stay permanently locked
within the sediments at the bottom of the Irish Sea. However, recent
research by the Norwegian Radiation Protection Agency and the
Federal German Office for Martime Shipping suggests that it is
blowing back onto the coast of Cumbria and South-west Scotland in
sea spray and contaminating seafood such as mussels, and moving
northwards into the North Sea and beyond. The highest
concentrations of plutonium - up to 45 milliBecquerels per cubic
metre – were found off the north east coast of Scotland, but
contamination was found along the Norwegian Coast, the west coast
of Denmark and all surface sea water in the Northern Seas, as far
north as Greenland and the Arctic.
Potential Marine/atmospheric pollution
An accident or attack on the return plutonium-MOX shipment from
Japan this year could create a floating radiological bomb.
Between 1990-99 there were 19 accidents involving ships carrying
nuclear cargoes. As British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) and its
shipping subsidiary Pacific Nuclear Transports Ltd (PNTL) prepare
for another shipment of hazardous Mox material from Japan to
Europe this year, that statistic is sobering, and debunks the easy
assurances BNFL gives to enroute states about the safety of nuclear
transports. As recently as March 2002 a PNTL ship, the Atlantic
Osprey, caught fire in the Manchester Sea Canal en route to the Irish
Sea for sea trials.
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