reprinted with permission from
Poison Fire, Sacred Earth,
TESTIMONIES, LECTURES, CONCLUSIONS,
THE WORLD URANIUM HEARING, SALZBURG 1992
pages 227-228
. . . Sellafield on the northwestern coast
of England is where British plutonium is made. . . . it is in this
room where the plutonium making begins. When
it is finished, the radioactive waste will have
increased in volume by 200 times.
This is the new reprocessing plant,
Thorpe. When it goes active later this year, the
chimneys will spew out an increase of 1,190 percent of
krypton-85, a radioactive gas known to produce
cancer. The National Radiation Protection
Board predicts two fatal cancers and 100 skin
cancers per year. Independent scientists say this is
an underestimate of five times. This gas is inert, it
will stay in the atmosphere, it will circle the world
and, it's predicted, it will alter global weather
patterns. And no one knows how bad the effects will
be. . . .
Behind the gates of Sellafield lie eleven
silos full of highly toxic, highly volatile
radioactive waste, and each silo contains eight
times the amount of radioactivity released by
Chernobyl. And each silo has to be cooled for
years to prevent it from exploding. Some are
leaking. And we have 88 Chernobyls waiting to
happen.
Christine Dean
Christine Dean, Great Britain. Member of the
Women's Camp on Greenham Common, Great Britain.
We have some more slides, if we
could continue, please? Can we have the lights
down? Okay.
[Slides]
And so we take the fire and we take the spirit of Greenham to the gates of Sellafield where the British government has spent seven million pounds on building this visitors' center to put out their propaganda that nuclear technology is safe, is clean, is natural. We pitch our tents and build our fire outside this visitors' center so that we can tell the truth to the public. As the visitors come out we talk to them and give them leaflets, and we tell them that Sellafield on the northwestern coast of England is where British plutonium is made. Here the plutonium for the bomb tested at Maralinga was made, and it is here where the plutonium for the bombs tested in the Nevada Desert, on Western Shoshone land, is still made. They call it reprocessing, we don't. It's just one more stage in the process they start when they mine uranium in the making of their plutonium bombs. It is to this place where the world's most poisonous waste travels by land and by sea. And it is in this room where the plutonium making begins. When it is finished, the radioactive waste will have increased in volume by 200 times.
This is the new reprocessing plant, Thorpe. When it goes active later this year, the chimneys will spew out an increase of 1,190 percent of krypton-85, a radioactive gas known to produce cancer. The National Radiation Protection Board predicts two fatal cancers and 100 skin cancers per year. Independent scientists say this is an underestimate of five times. This gas is inert, it will stay in the atmosphere, it will circle the world and, it's predicted, it will alter global weather patterns. And no one knows how bad the effects will be.
Already in the prevailing wind path from Sellafield, cancers never before seen in teenagers are being recorded. Teenagers are wearing bags on their bodies to receive their body waste because their bowels have been eaten away by cancer. Liquid discharges into the sea have created a 300-mile plutonium lake at the end of the pipeline, and half a ton of plutonium lies on the sea bed. The Irish Sea is the most radioactive sea in the world and it is dying. The rain forests replenish parts of our atmosphere and the oceans replenish the rest. All over the world, the nuclear industry is pouring radioactive waste into the oceans and the oceans are dying. The Ravenglas(?) ash-tree near to Sellafield used to have a nesting population of 24,000 seagulls and five other varieties of seabirds. They are now virtually extinct and the eggs of the few survivors are radioactive. Radioactive seaplants have recently been washed up on the beach. Mutated fish are regularly caught by Irish fishermen and increased rates of Down's Syndrome and leukemia are reported on the East coast of Ireland and the West coast of England. The spray from the sea is dried by wind and sun, and ends up as radioactive dust, which is blown over beaches where children play and animals graze. The contamination accumulates in the meat of the animals and in their milk. And government scientists have found dust in people's homes with contamination levels 27,000 times the expected background levels. Child-leukemia rates around Sellafield are ten times the national average, and close by in Seascale, one in 60 child deaths are cancer related. On the gates of Sellafield we created a radiation mourning symbol out of flowers. And as each flower was positioned, we read out the name of a child suffering and dying because of the contamination from this place. There were 200 flowers.
Behind the gates of Sellafield lie eleven silos full of highly toxic, highly volatile radioactive waste, and each silo contains eight times the amount of radioactivity released by Chernobyl. And each silo has to be cooled for years to prevent it from exploding. Some are leaking. And we have 88 Chernobyls waiting to happen. On the other gate we place Lijon's(?) story, Lijon from Rongelap in the Pactfic. She is unable to have children because of her exposure to radioactive fallout, and she came to Greenham to warn us, to warn the West of what our future is going to be. And at the fire sits another woman who has come from another fire in the Australian bush, where she talked with women who remember seeing the big black mist that came over from the Maralinga tests. And so it is at Sellafield as at o Greenham: Many women from around the world sit around the fire and we share our knowledge and we share our pain. This Hearing was opened by lighting the fire on a mountain top. And these last days we have shared much knowledge and much, much pain. I add my voice to the voices of you all. Together we demand that this nuclear madness must be stopped. Set before us is the choice of life or death, the yellow corn or the yellow cake, nuclear energy or solar energy. Together we choose life for our Mother Earth, for ourselves and for our children and for our children's children.
Thank you.
Sharon Venne (Moderator)
Thank you very much for that presentation. Where is Anna? You're next up.
I live in an area in northern Canada, well, not northern Canada, in Saskatchewan, which is very close to a place called the Primrose Bombing Range and we are the privileged people of having the cruise missile tested within 20 miles of our territory. They expropriated part of our territory in order to build the Primrose Bombing Range and the reason that they land a cruise missile there, says the United States of America and the Canadian government, is because the land is "unoccupied". So I always thought that Canada and the United States must have thought we must be plants because they don't think of us as human beings.
Where is Anna? I can't keep telling stories indefinitely. Ah, there we are. (...) Do we have one or two people speak? I thought there was one witness. This is Ivan. Ah, we have two witnesses. First, we will go with Anna and then we will have Ivan. They are going to speak in Russian.