CONTACT

4 thoughts on “CONTACT”

1. Hello,
   Just to inform you that Urenco and Babcock have gone through with their plan to dissolve the site fire and rescue service. The new service that is in place is a combined fire and security team know as incident responders.
   In the past the fire and rescue service on site were a fully trained professional fire team. What you now have is a team of security guards with very minimal very basic fire training (a one weeks course) with a few of the old fire team. On occasion there is only one of the old fire team on shift which is highly unacceptable and dangerous not only to site but also to the local community.

2. Dear Sir/Madam

   I am deeply concerned that there has been discussion about coal mining restarting in Cumbria, not far from Sellafield (formerly known as Windscale, but renamed after a severe reactor fire, many years ago). It seems obvious to me, with UK having one of the largest and most complex radioactive waste disposal problems in the World, that, when decommissioning the Windscale (Calderhall) reactor soon (that is becoming unsafe, including all its Blue asbestos heat insulation employed), that radioactive materials will be secretly stored/disposed off into these mines when the coal has been extracted. Coal mines that are not maintained with time tend to collapse (as parts rust and decay), such that any nuclear waste stored and leaching into ground water will be inaccessible and a permanent source of contamination.

   Is the UK government insane in its deliberations ?

   Kind regards

   Tim

3. Fracking near Capenhurst; not good.

   Coal mines in Cumbria a short distance from Sellafield allow coal extraction deep under the Irish Sea, and then the empty coal mines to be back-filled with nuclear waste from Sellafield that is conveniently “just a few kilometres up the road” (i.e. a short distance to transport highly dangerous nuclear waste, and hence unlikely to be objected to by the local community (?). The geology of Cumbria is highly fractured, so nuclear waste from Sellafield stored as backfill in the exhausted coal mines will become inaccessible in an event of an inappropriate type of nuclear waste encapsulation being employed. Encapsulation technology used to passivate the nuclear waste is rather key; vitrification or copper encapsulation are known techniques, but polymeric encapsulation is a disaster (explosion risk, as per occurred at Hanford (USA), wherein neutron irradiation of Carbon atoms in organic polymer creates explosive nitrate groups by transmutation). There are a lot of corroding and rotting nuclear waste pools at Sellafield, and the UK Government is desperate to find an alternative approach at lowest cost for storage or disposal of dangerous waste. Using the coal mines in Cumbria means that the value of the coal excavated pays for the cost of excavation. A nice cheap way of “getting rid” of highly dangerous nuclear waste, perhaps for a generation or two, before the waste leaches into ground water.

   With fracking, fracking fractures rocks making them permeable for receiving and absorbing dangerous nuclear waste from Capenhurst to be injected into the ground after fraction extraction of hydrocarbons have been extracted.

   Beware !

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