P-05-785 Suspend Marine Licence 12/45/ML to dump radioactive marine sediments from the Hinkley Point nuclear site into Wales coastal waters off Cardiff –
Correspondence from Petitioner to Committee, 16.04.18

FAO:      Senedd Petition's Committee Chairman and Committee Clerking Team

From:      Tim Deere-Jones: for Postpone the Dump of Hinkley Sediments Campaign

Re meeting of April 17th to discuss issues relating to our Petition:

Dear Madams and Sirs:

Please accept my apologies for the lateness of this letter which has arisen: as the Clerking team have been informed, due to painful personal and family circumstances over which I have no control, namely the death of my mother and the fact that I have been arranging aspects of her funeral from a distance of  250  miles.

The Campaign assumes that EDF, in the context of their ongoing and intense lobbying of Welsh Government, South Wales Local Authorities and Media are continuing to press for a rapid conclusion to the Committee's deliberations in order to expedite their proposed  dredge and dump action this summer.

However,  the Campaign draws the Committee's attention to the fact that, before any final decision is made at Petition's Committee there are a number of issues which remain outstanding and unresolved as follows: 

1:  Several months after the opening of the Committee's deliberations on this issue and the Campaign's initial request for the information, NRW finally provided a list of 6 papers in support of their contention that the fate of sediments to be dumped at Cardiff Grounds is fully understood and raises no concerns.

However, NRW did not submit two of those papers for scrutiny and so the Campaign has been prevented from offering a complete analysis of the NRW contention, because one third of the documentation was not made available for scrutiny by the Campaign.

The Campaign respectfully requests that, before any final decision on action is made by the Committee, that the Committee require NRW to either provide the missing papers for the Campaign's analysis or to withdraw their suggestion that those papers support their contention.

2: The Campaign has now been able to access detailed official discharge-to-sea data from the existing Hinkley nuclear stations which confirms that non-gamma emitters are discharged including the pure beta emitters Tritium, Carbon 14, Strontium 90, Plutonium 241.

This information provides additional support to the Campaign's refutation of the EDF claim, to the Committee, that Gamma spectrometry analysis alone has identified ALL of the radioactivity present in the sediments under consideration

3:  The Campaign has also recently received information from an independent analytical laboratory that Americium 241 (alpha/gamma emitter) has been positively detected in every one of a set of surface sediment samples taken by campaigners from the Hinkley inter-tidal  zone  (0-5 cms deep) last year. These results have been obtained using a more precise and appropriate analytical technique than that used by CEFAS on behalf of EDF.

The independent analytical laboratory also states that, in the context of the information in 2 & 3 above there is a strong likelihood that other non gamma emitting Plutonium isotopes (Pu 238, 239 and 240) are present in the sediments. The Campaign notes that annual RIFE reports always analyse Hinkley marine samples for these isotopes in Hinkley marine samples and report positive results.

The Campaign also notes that annual RIFE reports also always analyse Hinkley marine samples for the alpha emitting Curium isotopes (242, 243 & 242) and record positive results.

4:  The emerging information, summarised in 2 & 3 above, plainly demonstrates that the 3 radiological surveys carried out by CEFAS for EDF have failed to provide a full and complete level of detailed assessment of the totality of man made radioactivity contained within the Hinkley sediment.

 The Campaign submits that these issues are highly relevant to the debate about the basis of the EDF/CEFAS and NRW claim of "de minimis" radioactivity in the Hinkley sediment, which they propose justifies the permitting of the action at Cardiff Grounds.

I respectfully remind the Committee that I have already requested (and been granted) the opportunity to make/submit a final statement to the Committee, summarising issues covered by previous Briefings, and any more recent information from the Campaign BEFORE the Committee makes it's final adjudication on this issue. 

I note that I have not been invited to attend the Tuesday 17th meetings, nor have I been notified that it will be the final decision making meeting of the Committee's deliberations on this issue. 

This is of some assistance to me, as my children and I are attending my mother's funeral on the south coast of England over Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of this week.

However, given that we must be approaching the final stages of the process I respectfully request that I be informed of the date of the Committee's final "decision making" meeting on this issue so that I may present the Campaign's final statement and more detail on the emerging information summarised above.

Yours Sincerely:

Tim Deere-Jones (on behalf of the Campaign to postpone the dump until ALL relevant required information has been supplied)