Publishing its proposals for the regulation of radioactive discharges from Sellafield, the Environment Agency (EA) claims that lowering some discharge limits will reduce potential radiation doses to those living around Sellafield, and to the general public at large.
A CORE spokesperson said today “ This is clearly untrue, given that the Agency itself has confirmed BNFL’s intention to increase actual discharges from Sellafield over the next decade. Whilst recent discharges have been lower than usual because both reprocessing plant (THORP and B205) have been performing badly, BNFL’s plans to significantly increase the plants’ throughput means more discharges which means higher doses”.
In its Public Consultation response to the EA’s 2001 proposals, CORE generally welcomed the EA’s efforts to modernise the way that Sellafield’s discharges to air and sea were regulated, but were critical of the EA’s refusal to impose much tougher site limits for discharges. As one example, CORE queried the rationality of EA’s proposal to reduce the site limit for Tritium discharges from 30,000 Terabecquerels (TBq) to 20,000 TBq – when over the past five years an average of just 2,500 TBq of Tritium was discharged from Sellafield each year.
CORE added “ By setting the limits so much higher than the actual discharge levels, the Agency is allowing unnecessary advantage to the polluter and unjustified detriment to the environment it is supposed to protect. Letting BNFL increase discharges to meet commercial pressures is no way to achieve ‘ the progressive and substantial reduction of discharges’ required by the OSPAR commission of which the UK government is a signatory “.
The EA’s proposals, published on 16th August, are now with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, the Environment Minister and the Secretary of Health for their consideration.