Eight years after it was produced from material gathered from the West Cumbrian coast near Waberthwaite, CORE’s radioactive ‘Pizza Cumbriana’ has finally been delivered to the Low Level Waste (LLW) facility at Drigg for disposal as LLW. Originally presented by CORE in March 2005 to the Italian Embassy in London as evidence of the environmental contamination caused by the reprocessing of Italian and other foreign spent fuel at Sellafield, the condemned pizza has languished with other LLW at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell until 22nd February 2013 when it was transported by road to its rightful resting place at Drigg.
In advance of its presentation to the Italian Embassy in 2005, analysis of the pizza by Manchester University’s Department of Chemistry revealed levels of radioactivity in the pizza topping – comprised of estuary sediment, sea samphire , seaweed and shells – that classified the material as LLW. The levels of radioactivity included 25,000 Bq/kg of Caesium 137, 25,000 Bq/kg of Americium 241 and levels of plutonium up to 15,000 Bq/kg.
CORE’s spokesman Martin Forwood said today:
Burying our pizza at Drigg is proof positive that some of West Cumbria’s coastal areas are nothing more than nuclear wastelands. Unknown to unsuspecting visitors and many locals, the pizza materials and levels of radioactivity can be found in countless places up and down the West Cumbrian coast in estuaries, docks and harbours. A damning indictment of Sellafield’s radioactive discharges into the Irish Sea, these resultant radioactive wastelands can never now be cleaned up and will continue to pose health risks for many thousands of years.
The 2005 presentation by CORE to the Italian Embassy’s First Economic Counsellor Guido Cerboni carried the message (see note below) that the ‘Pizza Cumbriana’ provided real-time evidence of the damage directly caused to West Cumbria’s environment by Italy’s reprocessing contracts with Sellafield. After CORE’s warning that because of its radioactivity, the pizza could only be disposed of under licence, a Regulatory Officer from the Environment Agency later removed the pizza from the Embassy and delivered it to Harwell Scientifics at Didcot, Oxford for further analysis.
The subsequent report produced by Harwell Scientifics Ltd for the Environment Agency ‘Analysis of a Pizza Comprising of Sediment’ (RD 0693) confirmed the presence of high levels of Caesium 137, Americium 241, and Plutonium 238, 239 and 240.The radioactive half-life of Plutonium 239, an alpha (particle) radiation emitter is 24,400 years.
Notes for Editors.
i) The levels of radioactivity found by CORE along the West Cumbrian coast are absent from official annual monitoring reports because official sampling of mud and sediment consists of a 1cm deep sample being taken for analysis to compare annual discharge trends. Such shallow sampling completely ignores the historic build-up of radioactivity at those depths greater than 1cm routinely disturbed by holidaymakers, fishermen. dog walkers and children etc.
ii) CORE’s message to the Embassy: “ we believe it important that you, your ambassador and your government see at first hand the level of radioactive pollution we have to contend with in West Cumbria and which results directly from reprocessing Italian and other spent fuel at Sellafield. We urge your Government to abandon its plan to export more spent fuel to the UK and instead shoulder the responsibility for managing your own nuclear waste in Italy.”
iii) Italians spent fuel has been reprocessed at Sellafield since the 1970’s, with the final consignment of Italian fuel arriving at Sellafield in 2004. This despite the abandonment of nuclear power by Italy following the Chernobyl accident which meant that there are no operating nuclear facilities in Italy capable of taking back the products of reprocessing recovered at Sellafield (uranium, plutonium and waste) as per the terms of the reprocessing contracts.
iv) CORE’s pizza action was prompted not only by West Cumbrian contamination levels but also by a subsequent attempt by the Italian Government in December 2004 to send a further 235 tonnes of Italian spent fuel, not previously contracted for reprocessing, to Sellafield or to France’s La Hague facility. In 2007 the contract went to France.