Dubliners warned of disaster is Sellafield tank "fails"

OVER 300,000 people would need to be evacuated from their, homes in the Dublin area if there was a "catastrophic failure" of one of the tanks at Sellafield containing radioactive waste, according to a British nuclear consultant.

Mr Peter Taylor, adviser to the National Steering Committee of UK Nuclear Free Local Authorities, is to present his findings today to the Minister of State for the Marine, Mr Eamon Gilmore, and the Minister of State for Energy, Mr Emmet Stagg.

Mr Gilmore, who has taken an active role on the Sellafield issue, described Mr Taylor's study as "extremely important". The people of Dublin "need to be aware of what would happen in the event of a polluted atmospheric cloud passing over this city".

According to Mr Taylor's calculations, an aerial release of radioactive vapour from any one of the 21 highly active liquid waste tanks at Sellafield "could result in a nuclear accident between 10 and 100 times worse than the Chernobyl disaster" a decade ago.

He estimated that up to 30,000 people would die from cancer over 20 years, about 40,000 square kilometres of land would have to be evacuated for several decades and production of two million tonnes of milk and half a million tonnes of meat would be lost.

These were "preliminary and minimum estimates of the consequences of a catastrophic failure of one of the Sellafield tanks, which contain liquid waste, but he said they were based on the assumption that only one tenth of the possible release reached Dublin.

A spokeswoman for British Nuclear Fuels plc, which operates the Sellafield reprocessing plant, said this was the latest in a series of "highly speculative" studies by Mr Taylor, most of which had been commissioned by a number of local authorities in Britain.

Ms Judith Charlton, media affairs manager of BNFL, said the report, "THORP - A Catastrophic Failure?", was based on "an incredible scenario" which had been "effectively rebutted both by 3NFL's own risk assessment experts and by the UK regulatory authorities".

She said a total of 140 cubic metres of highly active liquid waste was stored at Sellafield based on a safety case which addressed all potential hazards, including earthquakes. It was being vitrified (converted into glass form) for "extremely safe" long term storage.

"It is a matter of concern to BNFL that consequences which can only serve to scaremonger and increase public anxiety, and which have no basis in reality, should distract from a reasoned debate", she said, adding that a 1993 Dutch study had concluded that Ireland was least at risk from nuclear accidents.