from Sunday Herald, 04 April 2004
Public health was put at risk by over a hundred leaks of radioactivity over 13 years at a military base in the Western Isles, according to a report just declassified by the Ministry of Defence.
Details of one of Scotland's most serious series of radiation accidents at a firing range on South Uist have been kept secret for 25 years. High levels of cobalt-60, put in the nose cones of missiles to measure their accuracy, contaminated the ground, buildings and vehicles way in excess of today's safety limits.
Encased in magnesium and designed to dissolve in water, cobalt-60 was fired out to sea on thousands of missiles between 1967 and 1979. Unfortunately a large number were also left out in the open at the base, ensuring that they got wet, fizzed and leaked.
"Whoever was in charge of looking after them was shockingly inept," said Calum MacDonald, the MP for the Western Isles. "It's quite a staggering story."
In February, he asked the Ministry of Defence to release an official summary of the contamination. As a result last week a 1981 report by the Institute of Naval Medicine at Alverstoke in Hampshire was placed in the library of the House of Commons.
All the names in the report, including those of its authors, clean-up workers and other officials, have been crudely blacked out by pen. "This report was filed away and kept hidden. It should have been made available to the public," argued MacDonald.
The report is a damning indictment of the lax safety standards at the time. After a visit to the Royal Artillery range in April 1979, experts condemned as "very unsatisfactory" the safety arrangements for the storage, transportation and use of the cobalt-60 devices, known as 'Radioactive Miss Distance Indicators' (RAMDIs).
"Both the ammunition technicians at RA Range Hebrides and possibly the local general public were being placed at unnecessary radiological risk by the inadvertent consequences of the RAMDI operations," the report stated.
"This stemmed principally from the lack of awareness of the contamination potential of the RAMDI sources and hence the failure to provide appropriate control procedures during routine range operations."
Experts from the Naval Radiological Protection Service became concerned about safety at the South Uist range after they were informed about an incident in March 1979. "Approximately five RAMDI sources were seen to be effervescing following wetting by rain or sea spray," the report recounted.
"As a result of this occurrence the launch area, source handling tools and the hands and clothing of one of the ammunition technicians had become badly contaminated."
But when they came north to inspect the site the following month, the experts discovered that this was far from an isolated incident. As well as measuring "widespread" contamination where the incident had occurred, they found that the RAMDI store, compound and transport vehicles were also seriously contaminated.
They calculated that the total amount of radioactivity that had leaked was equivalent to that from 26 RAMDI sources. "Since it is most unlikely that the entire contents of a leaking source are lost during any single incident, it is clear that a large number of sources - possibly a hundred or more - have been involved in leakage incidents over the years of RAMDI operations," the report said.
The Naval Radiological Protection Service paid another visit to South Uist a year later in April 1980, but found little improvement. "Progress made in the previous year was regarded as disappointing, particularly in view of the need for urgency," the report commented.
The range was cleaned up over two weeks in September 1980 but not without "a considerable number of operational difficulties". Supplies of a toxic chemical used to dissolve contaminated concrete ran out.
An industrial vacuum cleaner used to suck up the dissolved concrete failed because its bearings corroded. The same fate befell a back-up pump, leaving workers the unenviable task of shovelling the toxic slurry into polythene bags.
The number of 40-gallon steel drums provided to package up the radioactive waste turned out to be "totally inadequate". In the end 71 drums had to be found to contain the waste, before it was sent to Britain's only licensed radioactive dump at Drigg, near Sellafield in Cumbria.
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