Sellafield Nuclear Plant

By Patricia Jordan

The British government owned Sellafield nuclear plant on the northwest coast of England produces approximately one-fourth of the United Kingdom's energy. Radioactive nuclear waste discharged from Sellafield into the Irish Sea has turned it into one of the most radioactive bodies of water in the world. There has been an increase in the rate of childhood leukaemia in the area surrounding the Sellafield nuclear plant.

Great Britain is responsible for 80 per cent of the radioactive nuclear waste dumped and discharged into the oceans.

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The Children of Plutonium
High Cancer Rate Found in Offspring of Sellafield Fathers
By William Keepin, PhD (First appeared in Nuclear Guardianship Forum, #3, Spring 1994)

Adults who work in facilities that handle plutonium and other radioactive materials may unwittingly pass on cancer to their future children. This is the implication of a detailed scientific study recently carried out by British epidemiologist Martin Gardner and his colleagues, to examine anecdotal reports that cancer rates are excessively high for children who live near the Sellafield plutonium reprocessing plant in Great Britain.

The Sellafield plant is one of the principal sources of plutonium bound for Japan in numerous shipments planned over the next few decades. The first of these shipments has already arrived in Japan. Gardner and his colleagues concluded that the increased incidence of leukemia and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma among children in the vicinity of Sellafield is correlated with paternal employment at the plant. The results indicated that a father's exposure to routine low-level radiation on the job at Sellafield increases six- to eight-fold his children's risk of contracting leukemia or lymphoma. The Gardner findings are unprecedented, because they suggest that exposure to very low levels of radiation - well within accepted safety standards - may be sufficient to induce cancer in offspring.

Read the full article here.

Waste: The Nuclear Nightmare is a chilling 2009 documentary about the nuclear industry and what it does with radioactive waste. Much of that radioactive waste is dumped straight into the ocean.

Beyond Nuclear Fact Sheet
Nuclear Power and France: Setting the Record Straight

The liquid discharges from La Hague (and the UK reprocessing plant at Sellafield) have resulted in contamination of area beaches and of seas as far as away as the Arctic Circle and are considered among the ten main anthropogenic sources of radioactive pollution of the world’s oceans.

Two independent medical studies found elevated rates of leukemia in young people living around La Hague. (Similar leukemia clusters have also been recorded around the British reprocessing site at Sellafield which has turned the Irish Sea into one of the most radioactively contaminated bodies of water in the world.)

Read the fact sheet here.

Note: La Hague is a nuclear plant on the Normandy coast in France.

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Nuclear special Links between childhood leukaemia and nuclear power plant radiation
15th February, 2012 By Matilda Lee

The UK government's scientific advisory group found no link between childhood leukaemia and proximity to nuclear power plants, but German and French research has found an alarming doubling of risk

In the latest development in the debate over to what extent there is a link between childhood leukaemia and radiation from nuclear power plants, a French study has found a doubling in the incidence of the disease among children under 5 living within 5-kilometre radius of a nuclear plant.

Read the full article here.

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