Radioactive particles in seabed off Dounreay

18/11/98

Divers have found more radioactive particles in the seabed off Dounreay since September 1998. Added to those found earlier, almost 300 particles have been found since 1984.

John Simpson, the environmental programme manager at the plant, said "At Dounreay, four particles have been detected on the foreshore in 1998. Extensive monitoring of the seabed has so far yielded and removed a further 89 particles (end August to beginning of November) ... The significance of these finds, together with the 35 found in seabed sediments in 1997 is being considered, but they indicate that a sizeable population of particles is present in the offshore sediments."

Dounreay's Director Dr Roy Nelson said that it looked highly unlikely that the particles being found in the seabed and foreshore had come from the Dounreay shaft, although they could never say never. "We know that the particles were irradiated in a reactor in the early 1960s, and that they were reprocessed, probably sometime towards the end of the 19960s.

"There certainly were a number of incidents relating to the clean-out of the ponds which we know contained particles, but frankly there is no way of relating the particles to a particular incident.

"Back in the early 1990s, we put in a brand new liquid effluent pipeline which now discharges our liquid effluent to the Atlantic Ocean. There is no evidence that any particles have gone down that new pipeline, but there could well be particles in the old pipeline and its diffusion chamber. One of the things we will be doing now is to put a probe down into that diffuser chamber."

Dounreay