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Sellafield Clean Up.

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Sellafield is having a big clean up. It is called Britain's most dangerous building. It has 10,000 m3 of radioactive sludge. The sludge is being put into big backed bean tins and covered in Polyfilla. A robotic arm is being used to handle the sludge. But a comforting thought perhaps is that Hanford in the U.S.A. has 20 times the amount of high level nuclear waste as Sellafield. (or perhaps not so comforting after all).

Source: Not the Daily Mail.

Z.

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  • A very sensible document. In the context of decontaminated land having to be below 10uSv/yr, the figures given

    "Hence the total risk of dying of cancer for a person exposed to 1 mSv increases on average from 25% to 25.005%, and for a person exposed to 10uSv the average risk increases from 25% to 25.00005%."

     hammer home how the limits are a long way back from really existentially dangerous.  Only the high level waste, and things that are dangerous for non nuclear reasons, such as being poisonous -like lead based paints, or other ways harmful -like asbestos, really require the full treatment, and in the scale of the country, there really is not that much volume to be handled.
    With a slightly more lenient threshold, one could probably bury the remaining bits of the submarines whole and grass over them without too much going wrong, and have a condition where walking over the top would carry a similar risk to living a year in Cornwall, probably less risky than walking around Salisbury Plain  today, or at least whenever it is next open .

    Mike

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  • A very sensible document. In the context of decontaminated land having to be below 10uSv/yr, the figures given

    "Hence the total risk of dying of cancer for a person exposed to 1 mSv increases on average from 25% to 25.005%, and for a person exposed to 10uSv the average risk increases from 25% to 25.00005%."

     hammer home how the limits are a long way back from really existentially dangerous.  Only the high level waste, and things that are dangerous for non nuclear reasons, such as being poisonous -like lead based paints, or other ways harmful -like asbestos, really require the full treatment, and in the scale of the country, there really is not that much volume to be handled.
    With a slightly more lenient threshold, one could probably bury the remaining bits of the submarines whole and grass over them without too much going wrong, and have a condition where walking over the top would carry a similar risk to living a year in Cornwall, probably less risky than walking around Salisbury Plain  today, or at least whenever it is next open .

    Mike

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