A less-than-neighbourly dispute ensued, and ended with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) culling 180 pigeons. Coincidentally, at about the same time the comedian Mark Thomas appeared on Channel Four taking Sellafield to task for contaminating seagulls. Every time a seagull flew over the nearby town of Whitehaven he sounded an air-raid siren to warn people to take cover from radioactive droppings. Concerned at the possibility that pigeons might be similarly afflicted, the RSPCA asked BNFL to check some of the culled birds. The results were shocking. An analysis by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food revealed that the pigeons' breast meat contained up to 50 000 becquerels of caesium-137 per kilogram--forty times the European Union's food safety limit in the event of a nuclear accident. In February last year, the ministry warned people within a 16-kilometre radius of Sellafield not to handle, slaughter or eat pigeons.
A less-than-neighbourly dispute ensued, and ended with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) culling 180 pigeons. Coincidentally, at about the same time the comedian Mark Thomas appeared on Channel Four taking Sellafield to task for contaminating seagulls. Every time a seagull flew over the nearby town of Whitehaven he sounded an air-raid siren to warn people to take cover from radioactive droppings.
Concerned at the possibility that pigeons might be similarly afflicted, the RSPCA asked BNFL to check some of the culled birds. The results were shocking. An analysis by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food revealed that the pigeons' breast meat contained up to 50 000 becquerels of caesium-137 per kilogram--forty times the European Union's food safety limit in the event of a nuclear accident. In February last year, the ministry warned people within a 16-kilometre radius of Sellafield not to handle, slaughter or eat pigeons.
Are French and American seagulls and pigeons any safer than British ones? or are the British uniquely incompetent at running these sites? Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
So it has more sites that badly contaminated from the early days, and more equipement that turned out to not be the best choices, and thus are also not easy to deal with.
France had the luxury of learning from UK and US mistakes, and chose the most practical, fully-tested technology for its plants - and used a single design, something that the UK miserably failed to do. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Plus the operators are cash-strapped and skipped on maintenance. Vessels and essential heavy parts are past their intended lifetime.
Sellafield reprocessing plant is a kind of soviet-style eco-disaster akin to the (former) sea of aral. Dunno exactly why they fucked up so badly on this one. Pierre
I don't think this was ever directly stated, rather various experts suggested that there was no design need for the waste pipe that ran out to sea at all and so began speculating on why it was there. then they found evidence of long term collection of cancer records in the NW that weren't conducted elsewhere and added 2 + 2.
Whether they made 4 or 5 I don't think was ever confirmed, but given the cavalier way the UK govt have treated the population as experimental animals on other occasions it wouldn't be remotely surprising. keep to the Fen Causeway
He dosent go sea fishing in the Irish sea anymore. Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
