At low tide, the 480 metre long section, sealed at both ends was slowly hauled down the beach and in to the Irish Sea by an off-shore tug. Under BNFL’s Sealine Recovery Project the section will remain temporarily on the sea bed prior to being cut up under water and transported via barge to the port of Workington and by rail for disposal to BNFL’s licensed low level waste dump at Drigg.
The 10-inch diameter steel pipeline, supported on rollers and fitted with inflatable bouyancy collars, was escorted down the beach by teams of engineers, with divers taking control in the shallow water. The removal project, which first gained local authority planning permission in 1989 but which did not start until 2003, was contracted to Land and Marine whose divers were involved in the raising of the Russian nuclear submarine Kirsk. An extended programme of beach monitoring has been in place to check radiation levels since work began in August 2003.
The project was originally costed at around £13M but long periods of inactivity because of adverse weather conditions and mishaps are likely to have significantly escalated the cost. In late 2003, over one hundred and fifty 2.5 metre lengths of 8-inch plastic pipeline, already cut by Land and Marine, escaped from their steel cages on the sea bed during a storm and were washed up at various points along the Cumbrian, Isle of Man and Irish coasts. The UK’s Environment Agency stopped the project whilst detailed investigations into the security of the underwater cages were completed. [see CORE Briefings 09/03 and 12/03].
The 480 metre beach section removed yesterday was part of Sealine 2. The similar section of Sealine 1 was removed the same way last month. Both pipelines, which extended some 2 kilometres into the Irish sea and terminating at a diffuser marked by a bouy, were often the target of anti-nuclear activists. They were also subject to wear and tear by storm and tidal action and had often been ‘patched up’ with patches secured by BNFL’s diving team. In March 2003, BNFL was fined £20,000 for endangering the life of a diver who became trapped under the dive vessel whilst inspecting the pipeline. The company had failed to carry out an adequate risk asessment.
During service, the Sealines discharged a daily cocktail of radioactive effluent into the Irish Sea, supposedly at high tide and at an estimated rate of 2 million gallons per day. Their replacements, 18-inch pipelines laid down over a decade ago, provide the same service today, carrying the radioactive discharges from Sellafield’s two reprocessing plant and other site operations as well as site rainwater.
Under a different but related project, work is expected to start soon on replacing seven of the concrete supports of the pipebridge which carries the pipelines from Sellafield over the local railway lines and onto the beach. In 1996, after a CORE-commissioned independent survey of the pipebridge, BNFL was convicted of a breach of site discharge authorisation and fined £20,000 for failing to maintain the pipebridge.
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