Nearly 370 farms in Britain are still restricted in the way they use land and rear sheep because of radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear power station accident 23 years ago, the government has admitted.
Environmentalists have seized on the figures as proof of the enormous dangers posed by nuclear power as the UK moves towards building a new generation of plants around the country.
Dawn Primarolo, minister for health, revealed 369 farms and 190,000 sheep were affected, but pointed out this was a tiny number compared with the immediate impact of radioactive fallout from Ukraine.
“This represents a reduction of over 95% since 1986, when approximately 9,700 farms and 4,225,000 sheep were under restriction across the United Kingdom. All restrictions in Northern Ireland were lifted in 2000,” she added.
David Lowry, a member of Nuclear Waste Advisory Associates, said the figures demonstrated the “unforgiving hazards” of radioactivity dispersed into the environment, whether from Chernobyl in Ukraine, thousands of miles away and 23 years ago, or over decades from the Faslane nuclear submarine base in Scotland.
“Any breach of containment accident at Sellafield’s high activity liquid radioactive waste storage tanks would release many times the radioactivity released in the Chernobyl accident. And these tanks had an under-reported loss of coolant a month ago, so we have been warned,” he added.
The Ukraine explosion and fire was the biggest nuclear accident ever. In its aftermath 237 people suffered from acute radiation sickness, of whom 31 died within the first three months. Accurate statistics on the wider health problems have been hard to ascertain because the Soviet authorities of the time refused to provide details.
More than 130,000 people were resettled from the immediate area and experts say there should be no farming there for at least 200 years. The Food Standards Agency said the release of radiocaesium-137 in upland areas of Britain is still able to pass easily from soil to grass and accumulate in sheep.
The European Commission imposed a maximum limit of 1,000 becquerels per kilogram (bq/k) of radiocaesium in sheep meat affected by the accident to protect consumers. Under a “mark and release” scheme in the restricted areas, a farmer wishing to move animals out of the area must have them monitored by a hand-held device.
Revelations about the continuing impact of the Chernobyl accident come weeks after three different sites were bought in auction by EDF and other power companies for building new atomic plants in Britain. The sites at Bradwell in Essex, Wylfa in Anglesey and Hinkley Point in Somerset were auctioned for £400m by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
A similar process is expected to start shortly for land near the huge Sellafield nuclear complex in Cumbria, as the government moves to put in place new electricity generating plants to provide relatively low-carbon power and bolster domestic energy sources at a time when old atomic stations are nearing the end of their lives.
– from guardian