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British Isles are a dumping ground for nuclear waste
source: sxc.hu
Up to one thousand locations in England and Wales may be contaminated with radioactive waste from military bases and factories. According to a new UK government report, a quarter of these places have been already confirmed to be contaminated. These figures surprised the British people, all the more, because only in December 2011, the Ministry of Defence cleared about 15 landfills of nuclear waste in the entire country.
It leads the experts to one of two conclusions: either the authorities hid the real number of contaminated areas, or they did not realise the scale of the problem themselves.
“In 1997, I ordered examination of potentially contaminated sites and creation of disposal squares for radioactive waste. I am astonished and deeply concerned that this does not appear to have happened”, former environment minister Michael Meacher told the BBC.
Radioactive contamination was discovered, among others, in Dalgety Bay and the former navy base in Chatham, Kent.
The Ministry Of Defence, has already announced that it will cooperate with local authorities, residents and owners of contaminated sites to find effective ways for the removal of radioactive wastes.
Tags: contamination, nuclear waste, radioactive
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I thought issues like negligence and concealment of the real problem are just common with developing countries like the Philippines, but it seems the same with developed countries like UK.. Having one site contaminated with radioactive is already alarming what more of a thousand sites? wow and I can’t figure out how would they be able to clean it up fully and prevent it to leak. We are talking about radiation, that could be in the air, water, soil..the damage will not be seen immediately, but you’ll notice that cancer cases, sterility, newborn deformities or abnormalities will be increased…I hope their purpose of concealing the truth to the public is just to prevent them to panic and not because they could not do anything about it…