18 people attended the meeting and 40 people watched on the beach as Ian Fairlie gave a live interview to BBC TV South East. He invited them into the meeting but no-one came!

These notes have been checked by Dr. Fairlie and were taken from Dr. Ian Fairlie's address to the meeting.

1 The dilution factor for sea is much greater than that for air

2  Discharges from La Hague are 5-7 hours away at average wind speeds

3  Spent fuel from French programme is reprocessed ie, chopped up and dissolved in     concentrated acid before Plutonium & Uranium are separated from the remaining highly     active waste

4. Reprocessing - Low Level Waste (LLW) is dumped at sea - much larger volumes than from     power stations

5 Only Britain & France do reprocessing. Russian facility effectively closed

6  EVERYwhere else stores High Level Waste (HLW) for 10 - 20 years

7  At Sellafield there is a large No of HLW tanks containing 7.5 tonnes caesium 137 - main     radionuclide released in Chernobyl accident. Caesium stored at Sellafield is 100 times the     amount released at Chernobyl

8. Sellafield lies in the flight-path of transatlantic planes

9 There is always the risk of an accident at these tanks

10 Heat given off by HLW storage tanks required continuous cooling by 7 independent      cooling systems. If they all failed, the temp would rise to 2/3/4/5 thousand degrees & melt      tanks & concrete containment

11 Nuclear Installations Inspectorate & their French equivalent DSIN do not like these tanks -       they prefer vitrification but problems with this process means very little is vitrified.

12 Routine discharges: Tritium water vapour / Carbon 14 / Krypton 85 / Iodine 129

13 Iodine has serious health risk for foetus/embryos/babies/children/teenagers. Less harmful       to adults

14 The reason for the STOA report was because of a petition to the EU Parliament in 1995.

15 There are wide uncertainties in the critical group calculations re. dose and in that case the      precautionary principle should be used - as in traffic plans etc

16 But this is not done when looking at critical group doses.

17 Reprocessing is treated as a faith - viewed as a sacred cow by senior echelons in      Government

18 The European Community are very pro nuclear as well + COGEMA tell the French      government what to do.

19 No one has sufficient technical clout & expertise to stand up to the imperative of      reprocessing

20 Reprocessing is irrational - no sense in it - no need now - tons of Plutonium (Pu) for      weapons - why continue?

21 The only person who did was US President Carter who was a nuclear chemist. He stopped      US commercial reprocessing in 1976

22 Reprocessing creates Pu and that was the original reason - ie Pu for nuclear weapons

23 US President Clinton also tried to stop British & French reprocessing, but was      unsuccessful.

24 Reasons given to continue reprocessing given as way of using Pu to reduce stock pile but      reprocessing hardly dents the problem, the idea is a fig leaf to cover reprocessing.

25 Also MOX fuel costs 5/6 times that of Uranium fuel. Only France is doing this - not Britain or      Japan. Germany won't sign up to it but BNFL quote France as a reason to do it.

26 This irrationality is only possible because reprocessing is almost viewed as a faith.

27 BNFL has counter attacked STOA report & were trying to discredit it by accusing it of      lacking objectivity. Heavy lobbying by BNFL and Cogema in Europarliament.

28 STOA report available on www.wise-paris.org & EU web - that has had 10,000 downloads.

29 In 1999, discharges from La Hague were 15,000 times worse than Flammanville PWR      reactor along the French coast - 5 x caesium; 4 x C14; 3 x Tritium; 8 x all weapons tests in      60-70s. (Iodine 129 has 16 million yrs ½ life)

30  2,500 microseverts received per year from background by most individuals

31  ½ lives : CARBON-14 5280yrs; KRYPTON- 85 10yrs; TRITIUM 12 yrs.

32 Smallest dose has a finite increase in chance of cancer: Even pico or nano serverts add up      if x world pop. 6 billion in calculation It's a lot - just from Sellafield & La Hague discharges.

33 About 1.800 per person sieverts a year. from Sellafield and about 6,000 person sieverts from      la Hague

34 Reprocessing is unethical: there are no benefits - even in Fr and in UK. Disbenefits go to all      people round the world - it must be stopped we/they have no right to do this.

35 The risk is 5% - 1000s of people per year could be dying from it. At $3 million a life, saving      could be spent on cancer treatment.

36 BNFL & ICRP say it should be justified but it is not, and has never been properly justified.

37 Russian shut down their reprocessing plant as expensive to run. Small plant in India 10      tons a year, La Hagues 1,000 tons. US military shut down Hanford plant & now using dry      storage for old reactor fuel.

38 Thermal storage system does not need power, so no accidents likely during 10-20 yr      storage.

39 KEY THING is not to chop up the fuel and reprocess it.

Questions from the floor

1 Q: More info please:
   A: Ian offers to send out leaflet "A Nuclear Waste"

2  Q: Re taking potassium iodide tablets (KI) to avoid thyroid taking up radioactive iodine:     
    A: Better to eat edible seaweed as KI is poorly tolerated. Kids will probably vomit KI back           anyway. Take seaweed for 8-14 days after an accident

3 Q: Does reprocessing create DU?
   A:10s of 1,000s tonnes produced from reprocessing

4 Q: Dose graph:
   A: Uncertainty analysis done by NRPB in 1999. They looked at grass/cow/milk/baby         pathway. It revealed that doses to critical groups from this pathway had very wide ranges         when their distributions were plotted. There often were1,000 fold differences between 5%         and 95% percentile values, but only the median or mean values were used. Ie, these large         uncertainties were NOT reflected in official rep  

5  Q: International law:
    A: La Hague discharges breaks OSPAR resolutions, ITLOS, and technically Euratom          \directive 96/29. French election due. Jospin says no new reactors & close Super          Phoenix. He gives no encouragement to COGEMA. France has already set up LMA type          structure

6 Q: Why does the Environment Agency (EA) back technecium emissions:
    A:EA didn't want Blair to be cross with it. Blair keenest of all in Govt circles on reprocessing

7 Q: Will the new planning regulations avoid public inquiries for BNFL?
   A: Yes, will likely affect ease of approval for new build.

CONCLUSION: La Hague is more dangerous to people on the south coast than Dungeness power stations. We thanked Ian very much for his presentation We agreed to take the information back to our groups rather than form any new group, but to keep in contact by e-mail.