A NUCLEAR plant on Scotland鈥檚 north coast may face prosecution for repeatedly contaminating part of the coastline with hundreds of thousands of radioactive particles over the past 30 years.
The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) has launched a legal investigation into the repeated leaks of radioactive particles from the former fast breeder reactor centre at Dounreay. Specks of plutonium fuel have polluted the seabed, foreshore and a nearby public beach.
Dounreay鈥檚 operator, the UK Atomic Energy Authority, says that the particles are swarf from the milling of fuel irradiated in two reactors, now long-since closed. The UKAEA admits that some of the particles were discharged via a pipeline into the North Sea, and tonnes more were dumped into an unlined waste shaft on the shoreline.
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Since UKAEA began monitoring in 1983, nearly a thousand particles variously composed of plutonium, uranium, cobalt-60, caesium-137 and strontium-90 have been found around Dounreay, mostly on the seabed. Fishing within two kilometres of the plant鈥檚 discharge pipe had to be banned six years ago.
A total of 43 radioactive particles have been discovered at Sandside, a public beach three kilometres from the plant. But 21 of them were found this year alone. Earlier this month, the beach鈥檚 owner, Geoffrey Minter, won a judgement in the Court of Session in Edinburgh declaring that the UKAEA had damaged his property.
The UKAEA says that the particles on the beach are not a 鈥渟ignificant risk鈥� to public health because they are less radioactive than those found on the seabed and rocky foreshore next to the plant. When SEPA鈥檚 investigation is completed next year, it is expected to submit a report to Scotland鈥檚 public prosecutor, the procurator fiscal.