A RISE in radioactive discharges into the air is causing another problem at Sellafield and has sparked a fierce broadside from Radiation Free Lakeland.

The increased levels have come from the Magnox reprocessing plan whoch has had to close for five weeks to avoid exceeding the discharge limit.

The plant has just started up again but Sellafield Ltd has applied to the Environment Agency for a new authorisation to raise the discharge limit.

A Sellafield spokesman has said there was no risk to public health but Magnox was halted because the discharges were getting close to the limit.

“The environmental implications of the increased levels are very small. The rise in radiation doses to the public would only be a tiny fraction of that received every year from natural background sources,” said the spokesman.

As European approval is also needed for a higher limit, it may take some time to get a new authorisation increasing the risk of breaching the existing limit.

But the company stress that the impact remains small and the aim is to maintain safe operations.

Meanwhile the Radiation Free Lakeland group point out that Ontario, Canada’s most populated province (which has Lake Windermere's namesake) tightens radioactive tritium limits to protect its public –while Sellafield applies to increase tritium emissions.

In the same week that Ontario has recommended reducing radioactive tritium exposures to the public, it has been revealed that Sellafield Ltd is applying to actually increase these discharges.

A spokeswoman for Radiation Free Lakeland said: “The obscene scandal of Sellafield’s huge discharges to air, ground and sea both routine and accidental continues unabated with the Environment Agency confirming at a recent meeting in Whitehaven " contamination of groundwater is slightly more wide spread laterally, than previously thought. In addition both tritium and technetium-99 have been detected in the sandstone aquifer, which underlies Sellafield."

“It is a scandal that Sellafield Ltd has applied to the Environment Agency to increase its discharge limits following a rise in radioactive emissions to air from the Magnox reprocessing plant.

“These ‘discharges into the air’ are of radioactive water (ie tritiated water, with tritium being the radioactive form of hydrogen).  Importantly tritium is not dissolved in water: but it is the water molecules themselves which are radioactive.

“Tritium is increasingly regarded as dangerous to public health.

“For example, an official Government HPA report in 2007 recommended that tritium's hazards be doubled. This week an official Government-appointed Committee in Ontario (Canada's most populated province) has recommended that their drinking water levels for tritium be tightened 350 fold (from 7,000 to 20 becquerels per litre).

“This is five times more stringent than the current EU limit of 100 becquerels per litre for tritium in drinking water. The last available figures for 2007 show that Sellafield emitted 83 million million becquerels of tritium water vapour and discharged 628 million million becquerels of tritium water in Cumbria.

"The findings and recommendations regarding tritium in the Canadian report should be considered at Sellafield. Is there some Lakeland Magic making Cumbrians radiation-resistant while those soft Canadians need more protection?

“It seems that the nuclear industry and those entangled in its financial largesse do not wish to know uncomfortable truths about tritium so liberally released at Sellafield.

“In 2008 at Council meetings,  Cumbria councillors gave oral promises to consult independent scientists about radiation hazards: this has not happened.  Relying on the whim of theindustry and our pronuclear administration is irresponsible and apparently dangerous to the health of Cumbrians and people in the wider international community".

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