Nuclear waste fears

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33981, 23 October 1975, Page 17

Nuclear waste fears

(N 2.P A. -Reuter— Copyright) LONDON, October 22. Highly poisonous nuclear waste which takes thousands of years to decay is being brought into Britain for processing—and caused mounting protests and horrified reactions from ecologists. The Labour Government, which wants to encourage business to fight Britain’s economic crisis, admitted that it was storing waste from other countries and said it was negotiating with Japan for an extra 4000 tons of the lethal substance. The Government’s comments, coming after a story this morning in the mass circulation newspaper, the “Daily Mirror,” have led scientists in Britain to express fears that some of the waste might leak despite stringent safety precautions, and that the idea of making Britain a nuclear dumping ground was asking for trouble. The nuclear waste is stored in highly-concentrated liquid form in nine stainless steel and concrete tanks sunk beneath 20 feet of water at the atomic energy plant at Windscale, in Cumberland, in the north-west. Sir Kelvin Spencer, former chief scientist at the Ministry of Power, said that the tanks have to be continually cooled to stop them exploding. “We are steadily poisoning the planet to an extent which is perhaps beyond return.” he said. The chief contaminant in the waste was plutonium, probably the most poisonous substance known, which takes tens of thousands of years to destroy itself. Sir kelvin said.

“These substances get into the environment — the sea, air and rain, and finally into the human body,” he said. He thought contamination of this kind could cause more types of cancer and a larger proportion of defective, deformed babies. A Labour member of Parliament, Mr William Molloy, demanded a full-scale debate by the House of Commons on nuclear dumping. Mr Walt Patterson, a nuclear scientist who is a member of the Friends of the Earth environmental group, said that plutonium could be used to make nuclear weapons and may “fall into the wrong hands.”