The Polluting Plutonium Plants The La Hague nuclear site is situated on the Northwest corner of France, in Normandy, on the Atlantic coast near the port of Cherbourg. La Hague is operated by the Companie Generale des Matieres Nucleaires (COGEMA), 89% of which is owned by the government-controlled Commisseriat a l'energie atomique (CEA)-which has conducted France's nuclear weapons testing and production program-and 11% of which is owned by the French national petroleum company Total. COGEMA is therefore wholly owned and operated by the French government. COGEMA has recently opened two new plants, UP2-800 in 1994, and UP3 in 1989, increasing La Hague's reprocessing capacity from 400 tonnes per year to a total of 1600. Between 1989 and 1995, radiation in La Hague's discharges increased five-fold-making it the largest single contributor of radiation in the region. La Hague dumps an estimated 230 million litres of radioactive waste into the Atlantic each year.
Contamination from La Hague shows up at significant levels in seafood and seaweed near the plant, but strong currents also disperse the contamination northward through the English Channel and the North Sea, and its traces are found as far north as Norway and the Arctic. Studies suggest that radioactive contamination from La Hague may travel to southwest Norway in as little as 15 months. The Sellafield nuclear site, situated in Cumbria on England's Northwest coast, near the Irish Sea port of Barrow-in-Furness, is operated by British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), which is wholly owned by the UK government. Reprocessing began at Sellafield (then known as "Windscale") in 1952, as part of Britain's drive to develop nuclear weapons. Two reprocessing plants now operate there. The first, called B205, has operated since 1964, serving both military and civil purposes. The second, the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP), went under construction in the 1970s, but national and international opposition delayed its opening until 1994. The two plants have a maximum reprocessing capacity of 1200 tonnes of spent fuel per year and can therefore separate some 15 tonnes of weapons-usable plutonium annually. Even before the 1990s, Sellafield's radioactive discharges had severely contaminated the Irish Sea. So much plutonium had poured from the plant that a 1985 U.K. government report stated that, as a result of sea spray, concentrations of plutonium in house dust around Sellafield were up to 6,000 times higher than in houses in the South of England. Another study found caesium contamination around Sellafield 5 to 12 times higher than on Bikini Atoll, where the U.S. exploded 23 nuclear weapons tests. Public concern forced a decrease in Sellafield's discharges in the 1980s, but the British government has opted to reopen the floodgates. In preparation for THORP's opening, the U.K. government approved 900% and 1100% increases in the site's liquid and gaseous discharges, respectively. Sellafield's liquid discharges are now estimated at some 9 million litres a day. Under new authorization, liquid discharge levels of many dangerous radionuclides have risen steeply; between 1993 and 1995, beta radiation in Sellafield's discharges doubled. To cite one example, levels of technicium-99 (Tc-99) discharged in that period increased by more than 27 times. In late 1996, U.K. government research revealed that seafood harvested near Sellafield contained levels of Tc-99 more than forty times 1993 levels. Lobsters caught in the Irish Sea were laced with Tc-99-at levels as much as 13 times higher than the point at which the European Commission must notify citizens of foodstuff contamination following a nuclear accident. Undeterred by growing controversy over the new discharges, in 1996, BNFL applied for massive increases in the limits for gaseous discharges of Tritium, Iodine-129, and Carbon-14 from its chimneys. That request could be granted by the U.K. government in 1997. Increased contamination from Sellafield pervades the marine ecosystem of the Irish Sea and is swept by ocean currents northward into the North, Baltic, Norwegian, Barent and Greenland Seas. Studies suggest that contamination from Sellafield can reach the North Sea in as little as 9 months, and a recent paper revealed contamination from Sellafield in the waters of the Canadian Arctic. The Dounreay nuclear site is located on the North Sea, on the Northern tip of Scotland, near the port of Scrabster. Dounreay is owned and operated by the government-controlled United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA). Established in 1955, Dounreay now has two reprocessing plants: one for plutonium fuels from Breeder reactors, and one for Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) fuels from research reactors. The Prototype Fast Reactor reprocessing plant (PFR) was shut down for repairs in September 1996 following an accidental release of radioactivity. The Materials Test Reactor reprocessing plant (MTR) is temporarily closed, but UKAEA intends to resume its operation during 1997. Although far smaller in capacity than Sellafield or La Hague, Dounreay is comparatively dirty due to its age and antiquated technology; therefore, its impact on human health within the U.K. and Europe is significant. In 1995, UKAEA applied to increase "actual" discharges at Dounreay. Although requesting lower authorized limits for many radionuclides, Dounreay seeks to increase its discharges of Krypton-85, Strontium-90, Iodine 131, Caesium 134 and 137, Cerium 144 and Plutonium 242. Krypton-85 discharges, for example, would rise by 300%. If the new authorization is granted, UKAEA will also use a higher percentage of the discharges permitted. Whereas it previously released on average 10% of its annual limits, discharges would soon average 49%. In its application, UKAEA failed to even mention its plan to discharge two potent and long-lived radionuclides in its collective public dose calculations: Carbon-14 and Iodine-129. To put this omission in perspective, consider that at Sellafield, Carbon-14 accounted for 85% of the collective dose received by the public in 1991. As at Sellafield, discharges from Dounreay travel northward to the North Sea and Nordic and Arctic waters. Given its position at the tip of Scotland, Dounreay channels contamination more directly and effectively into these waters.
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